"Bringer of Jollity"
PROGRAM
Festival founders Claire Aebersold and Ralph Neiweem kick off CDPF's 35th anniversary season with celebratory works by Schubert, Brahms, Holst, Richard Strauss, Chabrier, Milhaud, and Ravel.
ABOUT THE CHICAGO DUO PIANO FESTIVAL
Celebrating its 35th anniversary season!
Founded in 1988 by MIC resident piano duo Claire Aebersold and Ralph Neiweem, the mission of the festival is to foster a deeper interest in the repertoire, performance, and teaching of music for piano, four hands, and two pianos, in a fun and supportive atmosphere.
ABOUT CLAIRE AEBERSOLD & RALPH NEIWEEM
Claire Aebersold and Ralph Neiweem are among the most accomplished and acclaimed piano duos of their generation. Described as“consummate practitioners of pianism” (The Washington Post) they met in Italy in 1970 as young solo performers at a music festival in Umbria, were married in 1973 and have devoted themselves to the exclusive study of the duo repertoire since 1981. In 2020, Aebersold and Neiweem were awarded the inaugural career achievement award in Piano Duo by the Josef and Rosina Lhévinne Legacy Foundation. The duo are founders and directors of the NEA award-winning Chicago Duo Piano Festival, held annually at the Music Institute of Chicago.
Aebersold and Neiweem’s CDs on the Summit label include Four-Hand Reflections; the world premiere recording of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in the composer’s own arrangement for piano, four-hands, and volumes 1 and 2 of a complete traversal of Schubert’s four-hand music, praised by Gramophone Magazine as “utterly charming...warmly recommended.” Their editions of fourhand arrangements by Brahms and Mendelssohn have been published by Dover, International, and they have written award-winning articles for Clavier Magazine. Their most recent CD, Debussy Duo Piano Images, was released in July 2020 on Berto Records.
They are frequent guests on WFMT Radio in Chicago, where they performed a series of over thirty live broadcast concerts covering virtually the complete four-hand repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries. The duo has appeared with orchestras internationally, including the Chicago Philharmonic and the Vienna Tonkünstler. They have been heard in recital in many cities throughout the USA and Europe. Performances in New York include a pair of all-Schubert recitals at the Goethe Institute, and a 25th anniversary celebration concert at Merkin Hall.
They are currently Artists-in-Residence at the Music Institute of Chicago.