March 29th, 2014    8 PM

 

One piano.

Six pianists.

Sixty fingers.

Twelve hands.

1,354,902 notes.

Infinite possibilities.

 

12 Hands: An Evening of Collaborative Piano Music at Scandinavia House

March 29, 2014 at 8:00 PM

 

Six New York based pianists present a collaborative piano concert entitled 12 Hands at Scandinavia House in New York on Saturday, March 29th at 8 PM. The program features Camille Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals, arranged for four hands, performed by all six pianists. The concert also highlights several other combinations, including four-hand piano duets (Barber’s Souvenirs and De Falla’s La Vida Breve), six-hand piano triets (Rachmaninoff’s Waltz and Romance and Tomislav Baynov’s Metrorhythmia), and a solo performance of Robert Schumann’s Sonata in g minor, op. 22.

 

Tickets are $15 and can be purchased via 12hands.brownpapertickets.com.

 

12 Hands draws together pianists from all over the world.

 

Ferran Cullell, a Barcelona native, and Sergio Sandi will perform a preview of their upcoming concert in Sandi's native Costa Rica.

 

New York native Jonathan Drucker and Illinois-born Jacob Sievers collaborate again, following a chamber music fundraiser for ongoing Hurricane Sandy relief last year presented by the pair along with Cullell.

 

Japanese-American pianists Asuka Fu and Laura Yumi Snell will reprise an award-winning international piano duo formed in their early childhoods.

 

Carnival of the Animals is a delightfully witty and at times introspective set of pieces based on the circus, popular in Paris during Saint-Saens’ lifetime. Originally written for an ad-hoc ensemble of two pianos and other instruments, this version was arranged for four hands by Lucien Garban.

 

Tomislav Baynov is a Bulgarian-born composer-pianist who lives in Germany. His innovative Metrorhythmia for six hands, written in an alternative time signature, exploits cross rhythms maintaining an urban groove and an expansive convergence of harmonies.

 

This performance will also feature Schumann’s original last movement of the sonata, which was vetoed by wife-to-be Clara Schumann, who claimed it was “much too difficult.”

 

Scandinavia House is located at 58 Park Ave, New York, NY 10016, between 37th and 38th streets.