Laura & Beatrice Playing
Music of George Gershwin - Fazil Say -
Sergio Calligaris

Laura & Beatrice Puiu, piano
[SferMusic, DDD, LBP 00108]

Track 2 (8.53): Sergio Calligaris (1941)
Parafrasi da concerto Op.16
sul valzer del 1° atto del balletto "Il Lago dei Cigni" di Tchaikovsky

Hugs and kisses of embarrassing generosity

Piano to four hands: exquisite performance in nineteenth-century, parlour expression as well as concerted-music, family affections that meet often - characterized - in repeated and expected educational essay, where admiration, emotion tears and the consents are above all if not exclusively by their parents and grandparents sitting in the first row. To whom the whole appears as a due intimate offer, as an embrace. Likeable homely.
Nevertheless, only for the naives, the "four-handed" is a kind of poor relative of the stately and authoritative ones "two pianos" (yet, here the fingers don't multiply themselves: they remain always no more than twenty) that the great institutions have proposed and still propose with the brothers Kontarski, Canino-Ballista , the sisters Labèque...

Also in the pentagram shops, seldom if ever, they extend to “four-handed". So that the CD's outbound by the twins Laura & Beatrice Puiu comes out again as an exception: a golden occasion to enjoy an itinerary on a piano solo. Which flies above the "usual" (with all respect) performances of Dances and Waltz along fortunate, as well as the traditions which took advantage in the Central Europe, among the revered Brahms and Dvorák.

[...] the CD holds one of the most fascinating performance of the Argentinian Sergio Calligaris: the concert Paraphrase op. 16 on the Waltz from the 1° act of the Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, given the first time in 1981 in the TV program "Voglia di musica" (Music desire) conceived and managed at Accademia Chigiana in Siena, by who writes this same note. Yes, exactly by Luigi Fait.
Enjoying now, here a collection of beats, full of enchanting theatricality, such to envision the two interpreters directly catapulted out of the black and severe Steinway, towards a coloured, fantastic stage, on which they are dancing, playing a part, smiling, even greeting us and kissing us with embarrassing generosity [...]

Luigi Fait

About the passages

The Paraphrase of Tchaikovsky’s Waltz from the Swan Lake has been discovered by us a short time ago and we have been attracted immediately by Calligaris’ piano writing , for its freshness and the inciting distribution of the two parts on the whole keyboard. It is always exciting to live again the different "scenes" of the ballet, "to see” them to flow under our hands as true ballet dancers, with those smooth and flowing passages and the virtuosity, that give so much satisfaction to the fingers! [...]

Laura e Beatrice Puiu

Twins Laura and Beatrice Puiu are one of the most important Piano Duo of the International Musical panorama. They are very talented and expressive with a special gift for creative interpretation.

Born in Bucarest, now Italian citizens, they started learning piano at 4 at the Arts High School “G.Enescu", under the supervision of Master Alexandru Dumitrescu. They were 9 years old when they win the International Competition “Città di Stresa”, continue the studies at the Conservatoire “G.Verdi” of Milan, where they graduated in 1999 under the supervision of Master Carlo Levi Minzi.

While studying at the Conservatoire they attended the International Piano Accademy “Incontri col Maestro” in Imola, where in 1997 they brilliantly graduated in Chamber Music under the supervision of Master Pier Narciso Masi. They awards at many National and International Contests, effect radio and television recording for Rumania, Czech Republic, Poland and Japan.

Since they were yung, besides an intense concert activity, they attend an important didactic activity, that sees her inventors of new and revolutionary methods of teaching, turned towards the first years of study and the preliminary studies of the Piano.

From 1999 to 2007, further to have been piano teachers, they were in charge of also the Responsible of Artistic Events and Responsible of Didactis at Academy of arts Discanto in Verona. They promote, realize and organize numerous and important didactic, artistic and cultural activities as Festival, reviews, shows, conferences, meeting, work-shops of examination and formation, etc., turns to the cultural development of the territory.

From 2007 they are regular teachers of principal Piano at the Civic School in Verona - Sommacampagna. In 2008 they founded the International Cultural Association of Music and Art SferMusic, that aims at developing, diffusing and increasing the knowledge of the classic music and generally of the culture, also through innovative and experimental channels.

Laura and Beatrice are engaged in the search, in the extension and in the diffusion of the repertoire for piano duo, also through their own adaptations for 4 hands and 2 pianos, constantly collaborating with artists of international fame.