Concert Review: Conductor Loh Connects with Epso, Audience
Loh took a backseat to his young guest soloists, New York’s Christine and Michelle Naughton, on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s tightly constructed Concerto for Two Pianos, K. 365. The 23-year-old twin sisters, born eight minutes apart, and dual pianists are recent Curtis Institute of Music graduates at the first blush of their professional careers.
Facing each other on grand pianos, the animated siblings played with discipline and precision, though it occasionally looked as though they wanted to bust out and improvise. That could just be youthful energy. Written for his pianist sister, Mozart appears to have created the concerto as a conversation. The two sisters worked in lockstep together, as if having a musical conversation of their own.
The crowd was clearly impressed, bringing them back for two encores, the first of which was a more modern-sounding piece that didn’t shy from dissonance and allowed the sisters to show off their considerable chops.