A piece written for us by a student!

By Scott

Back in 2020, we were preparing for our second concert at the Taiwan National Concert Hall in Taipei, after our application was approved earlier in the year. The concert was to take place in Spring 2021, but we felt that it might be safer and more practical to postpone our trip until the Covid situation was more under control. However, right after our approval, we asked if our friend and occasional piano student in Winnipeg, Fan-En Chiang, would be willing to write a piano duet piece for us to perform for the concert, and he generously agreed to it! Fan-En is actually a composition major in university, so writing an original piece was something he had a lot of experience with.

The piece that he wrote is entitled “Scherzo” (which means “joke” in Italian), and the title is quite fitting, as the music has a quirky sense of humor throughout. There are sudden dynamic changes, off-beat accents, odd rhythms, slightly off-kilter harmonies, and an ending that cutely refutes an exciting build-up right before. In the compositional style, Clare and I heard influences of Classical-Jazz composer Nikolai Kapustin, whose music Fan-En has played before.

We really enjoyed playing and recording this piece, as it is quite different from our usual repertoire. Hope you enjoy listening to it!

Click here to watch!