The Three Penny Piano: Music For Piano 4 Hands – Duo Porto-Frontini

Paolo Porto and Ileana Frontini, who have always played as soloists and in chamber music, decided to create a piano duet during a concert for the oncological Hospital at Carrara. As well as the traditional repertoire, the Duo has chosen to play trancriptions of orchestral music, according to the XIX century tradition. Because of that they decided to continue along the way of playing scores already written for piano duet and pieces not yet transcript (without distinction of genre, from Baroque perdiod to XX century) and, why not, the idea to commission new music to composers. After they’ve won some competitions in Italy (Piove di sacco, Città di Montalto, Città di Genova) the Duo decided to follow a Masterclass led by Maestro J. Paratore (famous for his piano duet with his brother Anthony) at Sommerakademie der Mozarteum, Salzburg, during the summer of 2010/2011 where they had the opportunity to play a concert in the city invited by the University Director. Guests of different institution and organization (Pianocity, ExPo Milano, Festival delle cinque giornate di Milano, Festival di Bellagio e del Lago di Como, Festival delle Nazioni di Roma, Amici delle Musica di Imperia, Il faro di Tevennac di Benevento, Note Romantiche di Verbania, associazione Rachmaninoff di Salerno) they recorded for important labels as Archivi del Novecento. Recently they’ve published their last CD about the chamber music of F. Kulhau with Brilliant Classics.

“Frivolous, elegant, pleasant: Piano four hands is often linked, in the collective imagination, to a “dancing” repertoire, usually played by young students with their Maestro. This is certainly an aspect, but on the other side we find out the transcription of symphonic movements or chamber music, an adaptation from the orchestra of famous and important pieces of music. It was a very common and easy way, especially in the XIX century, to listen to a symphonic music in all the places with just a piano. The extension of the keyboard and four hands are useful to reproduce all the orchestral sections or the complexity of a quartet thought.” by Paolo Porto