March 29th 2014 Concert £7 (£9)
Piano 4 Hands
Joseph Tong and Waka Hasegawa
photo
Programme
Sonata in F major K497 Mozart
Fantasy in F minor D940 Schubert
Selection of Hungarian Dances Brahms
The Rite of Spring Stravinsky

Widely regarded as one of the U.K.'s leading piano duos, Piano 4 Hands are regular performers at London's Wigmore Hall and South Bank Centre. Joseph Tong and Waka Hasegawa were prize winners at the 2003 Tokyo International Piano Duo Competition and at the Schubert International Competition in the Czech Republic. The duo has given recitals in Japan, Germany, Spain and the USA as well as live broadcasts for BBC Radio 3. Since their critically acclaimed London debut for the Park Lane Group in 2002, Joseph Tong and Waka Hasegawa have given a number of successful Wigmore Hall recitals promoted by the Kirckman Concert Society. Piano 4 Hands has performed at many of the major concert venues around the UK including Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, St David's Hall Cardiff, St George's Bristol and the Turner Sims Hall in Southampton and also at festivals such as Buxton, Cheltenham, Bury St Edmunds, Chichester, Guildford, Oundle and York. The duo's debut CD of Debussy piano duets for Quartz was chosen as Album of the Week in The Independent and awarded 5 stars in BBC Music Magazine as well as being recommended in the Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music. Piano 4 Hands' other CD recordings of Schubert duets and piano music by John McCabe have drawn similar praise in the Sunday Times, Gramophone, The Classical Source and International Record Review. Joseph Tong and Waka Hasegawa were elected Associates of the Royal Academy of Music in 2008 and are Founders and Artistic Directors of the Bristol International Piano Duo Festival, held biennially at St George's Bristol.

"Tong and Hasegawa constantly swap roles but their exhilarating pianism is wonderfully even' The Independent

"Precision-tooled piano duettists' The Times

"They make an inspiring duo and one senses a real bond between them' International Piano

"Sympathetic, scintillating interpreters' BBC Music Magazine