Capriccio - Duo Anders-O'Hea (Piano 4 hands) + visit of Villa Carlotta

PROGRAM

R. SCHUBERT: Bilder aus Osten (Pictures from the East) Op. 66
C. DEBUSSY: Scottish March (Earl of Ross March)
D. MILHAUD: La création du monde (arr. by the composer)
S. RACHMANINOV: Capriccio bohémien (arr. by the composer)

THE ARTISTS

The Robert Andres/Honor O’Hea piano duo is celebrating this year three decades of activity as a duo. They have played concerts both in four-hand and two-piano combinations and have met with enthusiastic response from critics and audiences alike. Various composers, such as Roger Price, Pedro Macedo Camacho and João Victor Costa, have dedicated their works to the duo. They performed for many festivals and concert series in various European countries, including Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Poland, Cyprus, Slovakia, Ukraine, Portugal, Cyprus, Ireland, Slovenia, Belgium, Austria, and Croatia, as well as in the United States. In 2004 they performed at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the “Tribute to Sequeira Costa” Festival, with the return visit as guest artists in April of 2015. In 2015, they celebrated 20 years of activity as a duo with several performances of Bruch’s Two Piano Concerto in several Eu capitals.

The Irish pianist Honor O´Hea studied in her native country under Mabel Swainson and Jan Cap. She pursued her degree studies in musicology at the University of London, where she graduated with distinction. During this period she won many awards including the Yamaha Music Foundation of Europe Scholarship for piano and, in two successive years, the piano prize of the Ulster Bank Music Foundation Awards. She earned her Master’s degree in piano performance in the United States, where she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study under the international renowned Portuguese/American pianist Sequeira Costa at the University of Kansas. In 1996 Ms. O’Hea had the distinction of being the first non-American to receive the Adell Hancock Scholarship.
She continued her studies with Dominique Merlet in Paris and has also worked with Pascal Rogé and Paul Badura Skoda. She has given many solo, chamber and concerto performances, as well as masterclasses, in the U.S., Canada, France, Italy, Portugal, Great Britain, Austria, Croatia and Ireland.

The Croatian/Portuguese pianist Robert Andres graduated from the Zagreb Music Academy and subsequently received a scholarship from the Soviet government to study at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with D. A. Svetozarov, a student of the great Russian pianist Sofronitski. He continued his studies in Vienna, and the United States where, as a Fulbright scholarship recipient, he studied at the University of Kansas with renowned Portuguese/American pianist Sequeira Costa, and earned there a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano, as well as a Master’s degree in musicology.
After teaching at the Kalamazoo College in Michigan, U. S. A., since 1993 he has been teaching at the Madeira Conservatory, where he is at present a tenured professor of piano and head of the keyboard department.
Andres has performed in recitals, with orchestras, and in chamber music concerts in many European countries and also in Venezuela and the United States. He is often invited to teach masterclasses and has been on juries of more than twenty-five international competitions.
Having developed an intense activity as a writer and lecturer on musical topics, Andres has contributed to a number of prestigious music journals, encyclopaedias, and magazines in various countries (New Grove Dictionary of American Music, American National Biography, Encyclopedia of Keyboard Instruments), as well as authored a book on the beginnings of the scientific approach of piano technique, published by Scarecrow Press.