jduo

There are two notable DIY concerts coming up in Toronto. The first is a traditional two-piano recital that has almost sold out the Glenn Gould Studio without the help of traditional PR or advertising.

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John Terauds

John Terauds, Editor-Emeritus of Ludwig van Toronto, is currently a Divinity student at the University of Toronto and a church music director. He joined the Toronto Star in 1988, was the classical music critic from 2005 to 2012, and continues as a freelance critic for the paper. He is the co-author of Roy Thomson Hall: A Portrait, a book written with Toronto Star Colleague, William Littler.

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Young Toronto pianists Michael Berkovsky and Lang Ning Liu are officially launching themselves as the Duo Volando at the Glenn Gould Studio at 2 p.m. on Saturday.

It is a noteworthy event for several reasons:

The music bridges European (Ravel’s La Valse), Argentinean (tangos by Astor Piazzolla) and Chinese (two pieces, including the Yellow River Concerto) cultures.

Most of the piano-duo arrangements are by the artists themselves.

One of the pieces on the programme — Sirens — is a premiere, commissioned from Toronto composer Constantine Caravassilis.

And, last but not least, Berkovsky and Liu had by Friday morning sold all but 20 seats in the Glenn Gould Studio using nothing more than the power of their social and professional networks, via Facebook.

Both pianists teach and do collaborative work around town. Liu is also active in Toronto’s Chinese community, Together, this makes for an extensive web of contacts. And, by the sounds of it, they have been careful to plan this event in a way that will hopefully continue to pay dividends afterward.

According to Berkovsky, they received a Canada Council grant that helped pay for Caravassilis’ commission. It will also later this year help them record an album from the material they will perform tomorrow. This will help them get their names and abilities out at a time when getting any sort of recital booked is challenging.

Berkovsky says the commission for the new work came out of exposure last summer to music by Caravassilis that Christina Petrowska Quilico has just released on a new CD on the Canadian Music Centre’s Centrediscs label.

“We heard the music and connected with it right away,” Berkovsky recalls. “The style really appealed to us.”

The duo proceeded to play for the composer, who was apparently inspired by their talents.

Berkovsky admits that he would have loved to do an entire programme devoted to Piazzolla’s music, which lends itself very nicely to two pianos, four hands. But one decisionmaker does not a duo make — and this par has known each other since they met as students at Juilliard.

Liu advocated for the notorious Yellow River Concerto, a committee-composed piece in Western late-Romantic that hails from the darkest days of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and has only recently been rescued from history’s dumpster.

“The original was not written in a pianistic way,” Liu admits, so, in the duo’s own arrangement, “we’ve made improvements to the piece.”

Also on the programme is One Hundred Birds Salute the Phoenix, a piece that tells the story of how a phoenix once saved his fellow avians from starvation and, in return was given a tribute feather from every other bird — explaining why the phoenix is now so colourful.

“The piano-solo arrangement brings out the colours and the 100 birds,” says Lui. “But in our arrangement for two pianos, we infused even more colours and excitement into the piece.”

Here’s the result, as recorded at Walter Hall last year: