A pianist seated at a single piano is able to fill an entire concert hall with sound to complete satisfaction. Yet bringing two such instruments together means far more than simply doubling the audio volume. We will have a chance to witness it for ourselves when South Korean brothers Hyuk and Hyo Lee – participants in the most recent International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw – take the NFM stage. In their joint recital, they will perform works by Arthur Benjamin, Maurice Ravel, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

The Korean artists speak Polish and currently live in Warsaw. The elder brother, Hyuk, received a special distinction as a finalist in the 2021 Chopin Competition. Most recently, both brothers advanced to the competition’s third stage. No piano enthusiast should miss the opportunity to hear musicians of this caliber performing as a piano duo at the NFM. The evening will begin with Caribbean Pieces by Arthur Benjamin, the Australian-British composer active during the first half of the twentieth century. They will then present Ravel’s seductive and pianistically breathtaking choreographic poem La Valse, conceived as an evocation of a grand ball at the Viennese imperial court in the mid-nineteenth century. Although Ravel himself prepared a version of the composition for two pianos, the Korean pianists have created their own new arrangement – what fresh perspective will it reveal?

The evening will conclude – this is no mistake — with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in Ferenc Liszt’s arrangement. The Romantic piano virtuoso created salon versions of all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies. These were originally conceived as solo piano works, but only the ninth also exists in a version for two pianos. This monumental composition undoubtedly calls for an orchestral richness of sound, while at the same time gaining a rather intimate status through the shared artistry of music-making.