(gentle piano music) - Hello, I'm Michael Baron, Head of Keyboard Studies here at the Bower School of Music.

The pieces that you are about to listen to come from the repertoire of masterpieces of the two piano idiom.

I teach a course every semester entitled "Piano Ensemble".

This course explores the vast literature that has been composed for what we call piano duet, which is two pianos at one piano, or piano duo, which would have one piano each at two pianos.

For obvious reasons, for this past year, we have concentrated purely on the music for two pianos.

When the two two-piano teams that you are about to hear heard about a major national competition for two pianos, they decided to work very hard, choose difficult repertoire and prepare those pieces to enter that competition.

They very much gave up their winter break to stay on campus and practice diligently and I think the results have been really quite wonderful.

The name of the competition is the Stecher and Horowitz Two Piano Competition and it tends to bring out the best of the best of two piano teams.

It's for pianists aged 18 to 29.

So there are applicants working on their bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees, as well as semi-professionals who compete for this prize.

Last year's winners were from the Eastman School of Music.

The procedure is to send in recordings of the chosen pieces and then three nationally known judges rank all of the entrants.

They choose to top five ranking teams to go on to the national finals.

So I'm very proud this year that the two teams that you are about to hear are two of the five that were chosen nationwide.

This is extremely unusual and we certainly wish them the best as they compete in March in the finals.

All four of the pianists are 19-year-old sophomores.

I hope you enjoy their performances.

("Barcarolle") ("The Night...

The Love") ("Tears") ("Russian Easter") ("La Valse") ("Waltz from Suit No.

1") ("Espana") ("Danse Macabre") ("Variations on a Theme of Paganini") ("Romance") ("Tarantella") (gentle piano music)