Concert at Capilano University

By Clare

We are so honoured to be invited back to Capilano University again! It’s always so much fun to share our music with the students and locals around the area!

Since the pandemic, the university got equipped with high-tech live streaming set up, so they can have multiple angles with panning shots all controlled remotely! So cool! (If you know me, I’m the one who is more into technology between the two of us! Haha) Now that when things are going back to normal, they’re very nice to allowing students to choose watching online if they are not ready to attend public concerts yet!

We had a program of lyrical arrangements, fun arrangements, as well as exciting arrangements by Scott! I loved the program, but I especially wanted to mention my excitement for the Rachmaninoff Tarantella from Suite No. 2 for two pianos.

So one evening we were driving home from a concert, and the radio was playing the whole Rachmaninoff Suite No. 2. We were talking about the Romance from the same Suite that Scott had arranged, and then the Tarantella started! I instantly loved it so much that I said “you should arrange this one!”

He was a bit hesitant because he explained that a work written originally for two pianos means a lot of overlapped registers on the piano, so he wasn’t confident if this could be worked around. I’m always the kind of person who says “you gotta try it to find out!” So I encouraged hi. To try it out anyway. (Check out his post on the arrangement ideas of this piece here!)

I think it was a couple of weeks later, he said he thiught it might work because he thought of what he could try. And then he printed out what he arranged, and we read it to see how it fit! It was mostly working just fine with minor things to be adjusted! That’s exciting to know! So then, we programmed it in our Whistler concert and the concert at Capilano thinking the 9-foot-grand would just be perfect for this piece!

The climax was so powerful at the concert, and it felt so good! Now let’s see if we can encourage him to do the whole Suite! 😁😁