Mind Meld: One Piano Four Hands

Musical compatriots. Collaborators. Teachers. Friends. Pianists. These are the links that bound the four remarkable 20th century composers, whose one-piano-four-hands works are brought together by Sono Luminus on this first CD from the dynamic ZOFO duet. Whether performing public duet concerts together or using the piano four-hands form to explore their symphonic visions, Bernstein, Shapero, Debussy and Stravinsky all understood the musical power of sharing the bench.

When internationally acclaimed solo pianists Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi joined forces to form ZOFO duet in the spring of 2009, their goal was to explore and enrich the one-piano-four-hands repertoire by performing and recording existing and new works at the highest level of musical excellence. The pieces they chose for their first public performance as a professional ensemble at the San Francisco Conservatory in the fall of 2009 were by Leonard Bernstein, Harold Shapero, Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky – four highly influential composers of the 20th century who knew each other, learned from each other, sometimes performed together, and embraced the piano four – hands form. Since their concert debut in 2009 ZOFO has performed dozens of concerts with repertoire ranging from Johannes Brahms to Tomohiro Moriyama, and in venues from San Francisco to Carnegie Hall to Osaka Japan. But for this, their first CD, Eva-Maria and Keisuke return to the four composers and magnificent pieces that launched them on their career as ZOFO duet.