Press

On the evening of November 16 at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron, the Naughton Piano Duo dazzled in Tuesday Musical’s Margaret Baxtresser Annual Piano Concert.

Opus 3 Artists is thrilled to welcome piano duo Christina and Michelle Naughton to our roster for worldwide representation. The duo have captivated audiences throughout the globe with the unity created by their mystical communication, in Christina’s own words, “There are times I forget we are two people playing together.” The Naughtons were recently recognized in 2019 as the first piano duo to receive an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

The first important thing to say is that American music had and still has its own folklore just as Hungarian music had it in the time of Bartók and Kodály and their followers. Listening to this album, we realize that for many American composers it has a very similar function to the one of traditional songs, folk songs, gospels, and also jazz and popular music.

Piano duos can be just as different from each other as individual musical personalities. The twin pianists Christina and Michelle Naughton thus enter a sphere in which duos are not often encountered: that of downright idyllic spontaneity.

The only moments not in sync during pianists Christina and Michelle Naughton’s Sunday recital at the Kennedy Center arrived before and after every piece, in the form of staggered bows before an adoring audience. The bows served as visual reminders that the twin sisters — who recently became the first piano duo recipients of Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Career Grants — are each talented musicians in their own right yet when together become a perfect storm.

The art of good piano transcription is in keeping true to the spirit of the original orchestral work, but also giving a fresh insight into the music while also avoiding the feeling that something has gone missing in reducing the forces from a full orchestra to a single piano.

On Thursday, March 14, 2019, at 6PM, four 2019 Avery Fisher Career Grants are officially being announced by the Avery Fisher Artist Program’s Chair, Deborah Borda, Charles Avery Fisher and Philip Avery Kirschner. The recipients being honored at The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at WQXR are Henry Kramer, pianist; Angelo Xiang Yu, violinist; Christina and Michelle Naughton, piano duo; and the JACK Quartet. This marks the first time a piano duo has been awarded a Career Grant.

Mozart & Mahler. New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart, with Christina and Michelle Naughton (duo pianists). Horncastle Arena, April 11.

Malaga. Museo Picasso Auditorium, Malaga (MPM). Duo: Christina & Michelle Naughton, pianos. Works by Bach/Brahms-Busoni-Kurtág, Bernstein, Mozart, Conlon Nancarrow/Mikhashoff and Schubert.

Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra is a mixture of influences from Parisian music halls to Mozart, Javanese gamelan music to jazz. It starts out hyperactive, moves to dreaminess and ends with lovely, limpid phrases, covering a lot of ground along the way.

Portland Piano International brought identical twin virtuosos for two recitals, and they delivered performances as polished as their presentation

Many renowned classical piano duos have kept it in the family — consider the Labèque sisters, the Pekinel sisters, or the Kontarsky brothers. The vast benefits of a musical partnership between siblings were obvious during Christina and Michelle Naughton’s concert with The Gilmore’s Rising Stars Series yesterday. The two 28-year-old pianists brought esoteric unity to their art form in a way only identical twins can. But as their spellbinding Sunday afternoon performance showed, the Naughton sisters are no gimmick. The two extraordinary musicians demonstrated uncanny harmoniousness and technical precision, even when expressing individual soulfulness and spontaneity across two separate Steinways.

They are dynamite — and not just musically. Twins Christina and Michelle Naughton gave an acclaimed debut at Frankfurt's Alte Oper concert house. In two concertos by Mozart and Francis Poulenc, the dazzling sisters from Princeton, USA not only displayed virtuosity as they climbed the musical summit, but also demonstrated an assured sense of style in their appearance, which included a glamorous costume change.

Mozart peppered his Symphony in D Major (KV 297) with crowd-pleasing effects for a performance in Paris in 1778. And yesterday at the Museum Concert in Frankfurt's Alte Oper opera house, Giancarlo Guerrero set the rapid scale passages alight like Mannheim Rockets, his pleasure clear for all to see.

The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra delivered the delightful auditory equivalent of double vision Saturday evening. Duo pianists Christina and Michelle Naughton joined the MSO, under music director Edo de Waart, for a completely mesmerizing performance of the Poulenc Concerto in D minor for Two Pianos and Orchestra. The twin sisters, both expressive, technically agile performers who pull an astonishing array of sounds and colors from the piano, played on nested instrument, facing each other.

In recent months, there has been a lot of buzz around Christina and Michelle Naughton, 27-year-old twin pianists from Madison, Wis. Such hype tends to make me skeptical. But now that I’ve heard the pair’s new Warner Classics release of music by Olivier Messiaen, J.S. Bach and John Adams, I’m ready to say, emphatically, that they really are that good. Indeed, I’m ready to put them on a level with some of the greatest piano duos of our time: Vronsky and Babin, Luboschutz and Nemenoff, or Argerich and Freire.