August 25, 2025
Issue: August 25, 2025
Personal Note
Dear Fellow Music Adventurers,
September is shaping up to be unforgettable. We're heading to Bucharest's stunning Suțu Palace to perform at the George Enescu Festival—a milestone that still feels surreal. Our all-Romanian program includes a delightful discovery: a piece inspired by Charlie Chaplin that perfectly captures why we fell in love with four-hand piano in the first place.
Speaking of falling in love, we've been researching the origins of piano duets and discovered they began as acts of social rebellion. Seriously—two people sharing a piano bench was once scandalous enough that Charles Dickens warned it could ruin reputations. This rabbit hole became our new podcast and blog series, where we're uncovering the surprisingly intimate history behind every piece we play.
Consider this your invitation to join us on both journeys.
September is shaping up to be unforgettable. We're heading to Bucharest's stunning Suțu Palace to perform at the George Enescu Festival—a milestone that still feels surreal. Our all-Romanian program includes a delightful discovery: a piece inspired by Charlie Chaplin that perfectly captures why we fell in love with four-hand piano in the first place.
Speaking of falling in love, we've been researching the origins of piano duets and discovered they began as acts of social rebellion. Seriously—two people sharing a piano bench was once scandalous enough that Charles Dickens warned it could ruin reputations. This rabbit hole became our new podcast and blog series, where we're uncovering the surprisingly intimate history behind every piece we play.
Consider this your invitation to join us on both journeys.
Featured Story
From Enescu’s Rhapsody to Chaplin’s Humor
At the world-renowned Enescu Festival in Bucharest, we bring an all-Romanian program to the stage of Suțu Palace. Our recital explores George Enescu’s legacy alongside new voices, including Livia Teodorescu-Ciocănea’s "Sonatina Buffa", a playful homage to Charlie Chaplin and the spirit of silent film. Read more and watch our conversation about the music on our website.
Composer Spotlight
Livia Teodorescu-Ciocănea (b. 1959)
Born in Galați in 1959, Livia Teodorescu-Ciocănea is a Romanian composer, pianist, and professor whose lyrical and dramatic music blends spectralism, neo-impressionism, and postmodernism. A leading figure at the National University of Music Bucharest, she has written over 75 works, including the acclaimed Archimedes Symphony and the opera The Lady with the Little Dog. Her music is performed internationally and has earned her major prizes, including the George Enescu Prize and the title Knight of the National Order “Cultural Merit.”
New Podcast Series
The Intimate Revolution: How Four Hands Changed Everything
What we take for granted as pianists—sitting close together, hands occasionally brushing—was once considered shocking. Our new blog and podcast series launches with the surprising revelation that four-hand piano music wasn't born from musical necessity alone, but from 18th-century social rebellion. When Ernst Wilhelm Wolf and Charles Burney pioneered this intimate art form in the 1760s-70s, they created more than music—they engineered opportunities for physical proximity that polite society otherwise strictly forbade. The forced intimacy was so revealing that Charles Dickens later suggested watching four-hand playing could completely change your opinion of the performers' moral standing. From Pythagoras's mathematical discoveries to Mozart's childhood marketing genius, discover how piano four-hands became the "safe space" where touching and nearness were not just permitted, but musically required.