WATERVILLE — A well-known piano duo from Maine is bringing a program of thundering, melodic, and humorous Slavic works to Colby College on Friday, Nov. 4.
The husband-and-wife two-piano team of Steven Pane and Yuri Funahashi, who live in Wilton, returns to the stage for the first time in 12 years, playing the music of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and Lutoslawski.
The performance in Given Auditorium at Colby College, where Funahashi is on the piano faculty, is on at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free.
“We performed as a two-piano team for many years in NYC and after we moved to Maine,” Pane said, “but we took a break as a duo while our boys were young. During those years, we had some great opportunities to perform with some amazing colleagues in ensembles, but this is the first time in 12 years that our duo will present a full program of two-piano works.”
The Pane-Funahashi Piano Duo was formed in 1990 and has performed at major halls including the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Saratoga Performing Arts Center and at many colleges and universities. In 1999, the duo was joined by percussionists Stuart Marrs and Fernando Mesa in the American premiere of Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic’s “Die Arten Des Wassers” at the Maine Center for the Performing Arts. The following year, the same ensemble premiered a new work by composer Philip Carlsen for two pianos, percussion, and oratorio choir with the University of Maine at Farmington Community Chorus. In the fall of 2010, the duo, along with percussionist Gustavo Aguilar and cellist Philip Carlsen, participated in concerts and workshops featuring works by Romanian composers Iancu Dumitrescu and Anna Maria Avram at Harvard University and UMF.
While living in Wilton, their individual accomplishments have been much in evidence in the Farmington community: Pane as solo pianist and professor of music at UMF; Funahashi as solo pianist and co-founder of Maine Mountain Chamber Music.
The program includes a transcription of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, which was part of Funahashi’s doctoral project at Juilliard.
“The first part of the project was to do a comparative study of works that already exist in orchestral and two-piano versions,” Funahashi said. “I looked at the different ways composers treated musical materials for the two idioms when they created two versions of the same work: Brahms/ Haydn Variations; Rachmaninoff/ Symphonic Dances. The Prokofiev transcription was the second part of the project. I transcribed movements from Prokofiev’s own orchestral suite using some of the techniques I studied : 1: Folk Dance, 2: Young Juliet, 3: Masks, 4: Dance of the Knights, 5: Romeo Bids Juliet Farewell, and 6: Finale: Death of Tybalt. We will perform all but 3: Masks.”
Other works for the evening include Lutoslawski’s well-loved Variations on a Theme by Paganini, Rachmaninoff’s “Romance” from Suite No.2, and Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka.
Witold Lutoslawski composed his Variations on a Theme by Paganini in 1941, when he was making a precarious living playing piano in cafes in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. The theme is from Paganini’s Caprice No. 24, which also inspired variations from Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Schumann, Benny Goodman and Andrew Lloyd Webber, who were all attracted to its high humor as well as its devilish difficulty.
Stravinsky was explicit in stating that the Three Movements from Petrouchka are not transcriptions. He was not trying to reproduce the sound of the orchestra, but instead wished to compose a score which would be essentially pianistic even though its musical material was drawn directly from the ballet. The piece is notorious for its technical difficulties. All three movements include rapid jumps which span over two octaves, complex polyrhythms, extremely fast scales, multiple glissandos, and tremolos. Stravinsky originally arranged the piece for the great Artur Rubenstein; Victor Babin, of the famous team Vronsky and Babin, expanded it for two pianos.
Given Auditorium is in the Bixler Building, adjacent to the Colby College Museum of Art, which has excellent campus signage. For Google directions, enter “Colby College Museum of Art” for a destination.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
