The YouTube video shows a young woman walking past a doorway, then backtracking to see a young man at a piano playing the first few notes of “The Blue Danube.” They exchange glances and begin playing the piano together, their arms encircling each other to reach low and high notes on the keyboard. By the end of the video, they’re dancing onstage in formal eveningwear.
The stuff of romance, perhaps, but it’s all for the sake of art, creativity and fun, brought to you by the piano duo Anderson & Roe. “In real life we’re not romantically involved,” said Greg Anderson. “We became very, very good friends, and musicians who are friends find ways to make music together.”
ANDERSON & ROE
Where: Orvis Auditorium, 2411 Dole St.
When: 4 p.m. Sunday
Cost: $15-$30
Info: alohapianofestival.com
Note: Piano lovers should also check out the Aloha Piano Festival this week at the Hawai‘i Convention Center. Solo division competitions are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday; amateur division, 9 a.m.-noon June 25; and concerto competition, 2-5 p.m. June 25. Admission is free.
Master classes ($5-$15) will feature Anderson & Roe and the return of Cliburn competition winner Jon Nakamatsu and professor Haewon Song. Visit alohapianofestival.com for a schedule.
Dubbed “the most dynamic duo of this generation,” the Billboard chart-topping team performs this weekend at Orvis Auditorium as part of the Aloha Piano Festival’s 11th season. They’ll bring the brand of showmanship and creativity that started during their student days at Juilliard, when they became dorm friends and found they shared a vision of reviving and promoting classical music.
“There was an element of serendipity to the beginning of our piano partnership,” Elizabeth Joy Roe said. “We actually just wanted to put on a recital during our third year of school, and it ended up being the catalyst to this 14-year career, which was totally unexpected and turned out to be quite magical and always uplifting.”
Not only did that concert feature their now-familiar innovative arrangements of classical and pop hits, but also costume changes, posters that helped explain the pieces on the program and even some audience participation.
“We did ‘Carnival of the Animals’ (Saint-Saens’ humorous take on creatures ranging from lions and elephants to — pianists),” said Anderson, 34. “We really turned the piece on its head. We added quite a bit of extra comedy or surprising elements to the performance. That was the first concert, and we’ve kept that sense of ‘joie d’vivre’ and sense of exploration in all of our performances ever since.”
Roe said a shared sense of adventure has kept their partnership fresh and strong, and pushing the limits of their artistic inclinations. “That really has launched so many elements of our career,” she said. “The music videos, back when we started, that wasn’t such a common thing in classical music, and it’s become an important element of our creative output.”
For their audiences, both live and online, that exploration has been a feast not just for the ears, but for the eyes. Their videos rival pop musicians’ for creativity, quality and substance, ranging from their fiery 10-video series on Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” which concluded with the burning of an organ, to their minimalist cover of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” filmed outdoors on the grounds of the Steinway & Sons piano factory in New York.
Even in their live performances, without the razzle-dazzle of video, the duo includes visuals to help instill the spirit of the piece, such as in the arrangements of three Piazzolla tangos they will perform here.
“Before we even started writing any of them, we decided what themes we wanted to stress through the arrangement itself,” Anderson said. “Obviously, there’s the nature of dance, but also a certain chemistry between those dancers. There’s friction, and with the tango in particular there’s the sense of the forbidden — the pope (Pius X) actually banned it because it was too sexy.
“Then there’s this element of danger, both emotional danger and physical danger, and so we wanted to create an arrangement that felt dangerous to play. (Tango) is so intricate that if the dancers miss a step, they fall over, and in our case it’s like we’d rip off each other’s knuckles and it would be very bloody.”
That’s not the reason the pair sometimes play at two pianos, rather than both at one, usually switching instruments during a concert to give each a chance at each instrument. They’ll have the chance here to play Orvis’ recently rebuilt Steinways.
“We really like playing on two pianos because there is that dialogue, and it can be as intense as four hands playing at a single keyboard,” said Roe, 35. “What’s been remarkable and special about our chemistry is that whether we’re at the same instrument or sit apart, we kind of feel things in a very aligned away. We don’t have to worry about synchronicity because we know each other so well and we have shared visions for how we want the music to come across.”
The duo’s explorations on the piano have taken them to some atypical locales — the beach, the desert, city streets and parks, even a hardware store. They are constantly trying to find ways to make different sounds on the instrument, whether it’s drumming on the case or plucking the strings by hand.
For their video of a delicate Vivaldi work known as “A Rain of Tears,” they made a large, heavy mute to lay across the strings of one of the pianos, damping the sound. “It looked really odd, and then we started touring with the piece, and the security guards at the airport would find this huge, bizarre device in our luggage and just berate us. So actually we stopped performing that arrangement,” Anderson said.
In addition to the Piazzolla and some other arrangements of dance tunes ranging from Gluck to Michael Jackson, the program will consist of two major works written for two pianos: Rachmaninoff’s brilliant first suite for two pianos and Ravel’s “La Valse.”
“That one is a seminal work for piano duo and incredibly powerful,” Roe said. “It’s a multilayered piece because not only is it this virtuosic powerhouse for two pianos, it also is a representation of the trauma of World War I upon society. … It’s one of those pieces that makes you feel like the world is coming to an end, but it’s a reminder of the power of music.”