2020 Piano Duets

The kids had their piano recital a couple of days before Halloween, and then they participated in the duet festival the weekend after Halloween.  The recital was a little touch-and-go because of COVID but at the last minute, we found out that the recital was ON, sort of - the studio was divided in half so that one group performed during the first 25 minutes of the time slot, and the second group came after the first group left.  Both performances allowed only parents to watch in the audience and both were streamed online.  It was fun to be able to invite Mema and Papa in Florida to watch the recital live, and since siblings were not included in the audience numbers Ben stayed home with Luke and they watched the recital online too.

Pics from the Recital:

Cat's duet partner from last year switched to a different teacher recently so she had yet another new partner - her 7th in 9 years of playing piano for Sarah.  She and her partner worked really well together and felt great about their performance - they both said that the best they played was at the festival.

Their first piece was a fun medley of Disney waltzes that my friend Dr. Robin Hancock (on the piano faculty at BYU, and formerly in my TabChoir carpool) arranged and shared with us.  It was quite long - 23 pages of music that they played in just over 9 minutes - but they managed it very well.  And fun that we invited Mr. Rob, as we call him, to watch the recital online, and he did!

They also did a Brahms duet called "Hungarian Dance" that was really fun!  (I accidentally messed up the recording of the festival performance, so this is a video I made while they were practicing just before we left our house to go to the recital hall.)

Jack and Eliza were partners again this year, as much as they really want to have new partners.  (I'll have to give in to that eventually, but the convenience of living together when they need to practice and perform and attend each other's lessons makes our lives in the weeks leading up to the recital and festival so much easier.)

This year, Jack chose Mozart's "Turkish Rondo" and Eliza chose "Washington Post March" by John Philip Sousa.  They both enjoyed both of the pieces, and they sounded great when they finally came together.  It really didn't click until just before the recital.  They even did some practice performances the day before the festival and those didn't go so well.

Their assigned time to perform for the judge at the festival was 1:20 Saturday afternoon, right in the middle of the day.  We wanted to go on a little adventure that day so we decided to leave early-ish for a Saturday so we could get back in time for Jack and Eliza to get changed and practice before we needed to go to the recital hall.  Well, we got back late and they literally only had time to run through each of the pieces once before we hurried over to the festival.  They were both in a good mood, and they ended up playing really well!  They were ecstatic over their performance when we left, saying it was the best they'd played!  And I had to wonder if it wasn't good that I didn't drill them the day of the performance - first of all so that they wouldn't be tired/frustrated/annoyed, but secondly because they didn't go into autopilot mode but really thought about what they were doing during the recital.

Whatever the case, they did well enough that they were chosen as winners!  We got a call Saturday night that they were in the top 15% of the group of 80-90ish performers and would receive a cash prize soon.  There's no winners' recital because of COVID but the cash is the most exciting part anyway, haha.