The Voice Reimagined for Four Hands
This programme explores how the piano can sing without words, and how familiar music can acquire a new voice when shared by four hands.
Schubert’s Lebensstürme opens in a state of urgency. Its dramatic contrasts and interwoven textures transform a single keyboard into an orchestral space.
The programme then turns towards the intimacy of song. In Dichter(in)liebe reimagined for four hands, three songs from Schumann’s Dichterliebe are heard without a singer. Their vocal lines and inner echoes are shared between two pianists, allowing the poetry to remain present through gesture, breath and memory.
Cantata (re)mixed for four hands carries this process into Bach’s sacred world. Rather than reconstructing a historical cantata, it brings together sinfonias, chorales, preludes and arias from different works to form a newly imagined whole. Most movements were reimagined by Chiahu Lee, alongside György Kurtág’s intimate transcription of the Sonatina from Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit.
Bach was himself a master of transcription and renewal. In that spirit, this programme treats arrangement as a way of listening again, discovering new colours and meanings within familiar music.
