The dashing new chamber music series, Chamber on the Mountain in Ojai, has booked a sensational act for its first concert of 2016, the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo, which will perform at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 17, in Logan House (adjacent to the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts in Upper Ojai), at 8585 Ojai-Santa Paula Road.
The duo’s program will include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart‘s Grand Scherzo (based on the Finale to Act I from Così fan tutte, K. 588); Igor Stravinsky‘s Le Sacre du printemps (“Part I: The Adoration of the Earth”); Sergei Rachmaninov‘s Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14; Michael Jackson‘s “Billie Jean,” from Thriller; Wolfgang Mozart’s Papageno! (a short fantasy based on arias from Die Zauberflöte, K. 620); the ballet from Christoph Willibald Gluck‘s Orfeo ed Euridice; the “Hesitation-Tango” from Samuel Barber‘s ballet, Souvenirs, Op. 28; Astor Piazzolla’s “Primavera Porteña,” “Oblivion” and “Libertango”; and the “Mambo” from Leonard Bernstein‘s West Side Story.
In terms of content — always excepting the Stravinsky — this is the program of what is usually known as a “pops” or “light classical” concert.
I hasten to add, however, that everything on it — even “Billy Jean” — is entirely worthy of our attention; nevertheless, what compels our attendance at this concert is not the music but the musicians.
“What a tangled web we weave. Go ’round with circumstance. Someone show me how to tell the dancer from the dance,” goes a tune by the Eagles.
Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe met at Juilliard School and began performing together while they were still undergraduates, forming one of those intense bonds peculiar to only musical genius, in which it becomes impossible to say where one leaves off and the other begins.
Whether performing on one piano or two, and despite obvious differences of gender and ethnicity, they play like they were one person with four hands.
Yet, that is not quite right, because, while they are playing each piece as one performer (and playing it brilliantly), they are also interacting with each other as sovereign individuals — flirtatiously, ironically, amorously — as if their concerts were one long courtship ritual.
This romantic involvement, which whispers in the background of their many videos, may be an elaborately conceived simulation, but it is mighty convincing in action.
They are never clowns, yet they bring a huge, almost cosmic, sense of fun to their performances, a trait that has been missing from American concert halls forever.
General admission to the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo is $25; student admission is $15. Tickets are available by phone 805.646.9951 or online at www.chamberonthemountain.com/reservations.html.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.