Join us for our debut performance with the San Francisco Symphony! This family-friendly concert, conducted by maestro Edwin Outwater, will include a playful, eccentric, and surprising take on Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals, as well as our arrangements of Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumblebee[s] and Jack Fina's Bumble Boogie.
"Wild Sounds" with the San Francisco Symphony
Davies Hall, San Francisco, CA
Saturday, December 3rd at 2:00 P.M.
Ticket information here
Brahms Double Concerto Premiere
During our visit to beautiful, snowy Santa Fe this past Christmas Eve, we were excited to premiere a work that has been years in the making: Brahms' Double Concerto in our arrangement for two pianos and orchestra. We were fortunate to perform the work with the Performance Santa Fe Symphony under the direction of maestro Joseph Illick, whose boundless positivity and supreme flexibility made the premiere a joyous success.
Brahms often struggled with instrumentation when composing. For example, he morphed his string quintet into a two piano sonata before finally settling on its final form: a piano quintet. Similarly, the first piano concerto began as a sonata for piano, four hands. But regardless of his music's instrumentation, one gets the sense that he conceived at the piano, especially given how many of his works he ultimately arranged for piano duo and duet. In fact, Brahms arranged nearly every piece he wrote for the genre — see Christian Köhn and Silke-Thora Matthies’s complete 18-disc set of Brahms' piano duo music for evidence.
With the Double Concerto, the solo violin and cello lines translated themselves idiomatically to the piano. We were further delighted by the number of similarities between this concerto and his two solo piano concertos, which we ultimately highlighted in the arrangement itself. The pieces feels as if we're performing a big, Romantic Brahms piano concerto, but with the added dialogue of a double concerto. And suitably, the piece's biographical subtext remains firmly in place (the piece was composed as something of a reconciliation plea to violinist Joseph Joachim); the piece now serves as a universal statement of pain, forgiveness, and friendship.
“In this committed unveiling, it came across as an effective concert work, a useful addition to the regrettably small repertoire of concertos for two pianos and orchestra.”
We're "In the Spotlight"
At our performance last month at the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center, we helped kick off an initiative for Howard Community College to become an All-Steinway school. Here's our interview with HCC's "In the Spotlight" about relevancy, pianos, and achieving spontaneity in classical music.
Join us under the stars at the Wine Country Film Festival!
PICTURE IT:
You’re sitting in a vineyard under the stars with wine in hand, attending…
… none other than a live Anderson & Roe performance and a world premiere film event!
How did this come to be?
In 2012, we dove headfirst into our most ambitious and exciting project to date — a grand culmination of love, labor, and lost limbs (well, toenails): The Rite of Spring: A Musical Odyssey. The project propelled our imagination to new heights and took us filming all over America, and three crazy years later, we're thrilled to announce the music video has been selected to receive its world premiere as a highlight film in the 2015 Wine Country Film Festival in Sonoma!
As a featured event, this won't be like any other premiere. Instead of sandwiching our movie amongst a host of other films in a stuffy theater in the middle of the afternoon, we'll be screening outdoors under the stars in a vineyard at the Valley of the Moon Cinema on Deerfield Ranch Winery. We'll begin with a half-hour duo performance on a beautiful concert grand piano, generously donated by Steinway, while prepping for some of the provocative themes presented in Stravinsky’s music. After which: the world premiere of the entire film on a huge movie screen (a dream come true!), a clip from Chronicling the ‘Rite’ (our behind-the-scenes featurette), and a Q&A session.
It's sure to be a grand celebration! Come early to visit the gourmet food trucks... and we plan to party hard afterwards. In fact, we encourage you to make a day (or weekend getaway!) of it.
- Saturday, September 19
- Food + wine trucks open at 6:00p.m.
- Event begins at 7:00p.m.
- Bring blankets or low-back chairs
- Tickets here
We hope to see you there, with a glass of wine in each hand. ;)
We're addicted to love ;-)
What with our latest duo release (An Amadeus Affair) and our nearly non-stop touring schedule, we've had quite a number of (awesome!) reactions to our recent performances. Here's a round-up of some of the latest love we've received:
Palm Beach Daily News
Glorious… The Anderson & Roe Piano Duo’s performance was something rarely encountered in concert-going. They have a truly deep artistry … a massive range of sound and impeccable technique. Imagine two pianos on steroids. Who says classical musicians are stuffy?
Audiophile Audition (regarding An Amadeus Affair):
Totally delightful … unforgettable moments of heartbroken, bittersweet, eternal love … utterly poignant. Everything is beautifully realized by Anderson & Roe; it will change the lives of all who hear it, both for the music and the way it is played.
Performing Arts Monterey Bay
The audience, like Vesuvius, erupted with one massive cheer, jumping to its feet, settling for a moment like hot pumice only to explode again minutes later for two more dazzling pyrotechnic encores. …all the flamboyance, adrenaline and infectious passion that youth and virtuosity could muster.
…sublime, heart-felt musicianship. [Their performance of Bach's] Concerto for Two Keyboards in C major showed exquisite phrasing, beautiful rich tone and a synchronicity in performance and interpretation that I have rarely seen in a live performance.
Wayne Lee Gay of D Magazine:
Beautifully crafted, brilliantly played … this jaded old music critic was impressed by the impeccable technique and musicianship of the duo.
Palm Beach Arts Paper
Exquisite … nothing short of brilliant … Their playing left me in awe and amazement.
Theater Jones
A gateway drug to classical music … [Anderson & Roe] get people listening and having fun doing it. Two highly skilled, energetic young pianists … really wonderful, sensible ensemble … clever, complex arrangements. Their piano four hands performance of their arrangement of the first section of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring, which turned 100 last year, was timeless.
Dallas Observer:
Immensely talented and entertaining…
DFW.com
Mixing music and mayhem … [Anderson & Roe's] playing was marked by virtuosity and bubbled with youthful energy. Excellent music that was markedly different from what we usually hear, a full measure of originality, and Cliburn-level pianism.