The Other Side of Magic
by Lisa McDivitt
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During high school, Greg played the Brahms Variations on a Theme by Haydn with another pianist. It became a point of frustration, because, in light of Greg’s perfectionism, he and this other player could never execute the opening of the piece simultaneously. One summer in the Hamptons, where both were attending a music festival, the two decided to perform the same piece together. At the first rehearsal they sat together at adjacent pianos, took a breath, touched the keys, and proceeded to play the famed theme. The result? Effortless, instinctive, perfect togetherness. Greg stopped playing, grabbed her arm, and emphatically told her she had no idea what she had just done. A piano duo was born.
Since their freshman year at Juilliard, the two have played both together and independently, making their mark on the New York concert scene and developing a name for themselves at the conservatory. The Juilliard administration holds them in high regard, having asked them to play for several of their 100th anniversary concerts, such as the October performance at Alice Tully Hall.
Because Liz and Greg have a unique style, they like to create their own works, such as their riff on Johann Strauss’s “BlueDanube Waltzes.” Beneath their fingertips, it becomes a sexy, overt, hilarious, and virtuosic fantasy. Not exactly the staple repertoire of today’s classical music world. Yet they certainly don’t ignore the “staples.” For an upcoming recital, they decided to learn a Mozart work, the Sonata in C Major for four hands, K. 521. It is, as Liz and Greg describe Mozart in general, “pure.”
In addition to the Mozart, they were looking for a French composition. Greg went to the library to check out four-hand pieces by French composers, and had very little to chose from. “They all had titles like ‘Petite Suite,’ ‘Mother Goose,’ ‘Dolly Suite.’ That’s really not the image we want to portray,” Greg said. He described his impression of those pieces as something two little girls in lace dresses would perform for the ladies after a tea. So instead, Greg found a two-piano adaptation of the orchestral version of Paul Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Perhaps most familiar to fans of the movie Fantasia, this intense and at times ominous piece has all of the thrill, fanfare essential to a true Anderson & Roe selection. In composing the arrangement, Greg not only had to fit everything onto one piano, but he had to make the necessary additions and changes to the score to keep with the Anderson & Roe transcription tradition.
In the midst of preparing for their recital, Liz and Greg were also approaching fall term finals, and a demanding concert schedule. They had recently been selected to perform Johannes Brahms’s Sonata for Two Pianos at Carnegie Hall. Also, Liz had just won a competition to play Benjamin Britten’s Piano Concerto with the Juilliard Orchestra in mid-November.