Autumn Chamber Music Festival. Music for two pianos. Vasks, Schubert, Stravinsky

Performers: Linda Leine (piano) and Darja Maršiņina (piano)

Programme:

I part

Franz Schubert
Divertissement sur des motifs originaux français D 823

II part

Pēteris Vasks
Music for two pianos

Igor Stravinsky
Concerto per due pianoforti soli

Franz Schubert
Rondo in D major D 608

When performing in a piano duo, both pianists on stage are so closely connected that, for the most part, only blood relatives or spouses agree to work in such tandem. Pianists Linda Leine  and Daria Marshinina are neither sisters nor relatives, but both artists agree that the mutual understanding and trust born between them during the very first study years in Hamburg is a rare and precious gift.

After studying in Latvia, the girl from Riga, Linda Leine, continued her education in Lubeck and Hamburg, while Daria Marshinina is from Moscow and after studying in Gnessin Academy of Music went further to Berlin, Rostock and Hamburg. They met in the piano duo study classes of Ms Lilya Zilberstein, later on learning to perform in an ensemble under the guidance of brothers Hans-Peter and Volker Stenzl. Both pianists claim that the experience of this summer while attending the master classes with world famous pianist Sir Andras Schiff and the festival The Schubertiade was very crucial.

Significant composers for the duo are the romantic singer Franz Schubert and the constantly moving pedantic Igor Stravinsky. “Both Schubert’s grandiose Divertissement and Rondo in D Major are very rare concert pieces that must be heard,” Linda Leine emphasises. While Stravinsky’s Concerto for Two Pianos referred to as the pinnacle of neoclassicism is an unlimited opus where the listener can discover new dimensions, again and again. The first recorded concert programme released last year by the record label Es-dur, has also been complemented with a colour from Latvia– it has received a special blessing and consent from the composer Pēteris Vasks.