Claire Aebersold and Ralph Neiweem Launch Chicago Duo Piano Festival With Mozart, Liszt, and a World Premiere in Evanston

EVANSTON, IL — The 38th Chicago Duo Piano Festival began Sunday at Nichols Concert Hall in Evanston with a program that mixed familiar masterworks, a recent premiere, and the polished partnership of Claire Aebersold and Ralph Neiweem. The Music Institute of Chicago faculty members founded the festival in 1988, and they opened this year’s edition with an appreciative, crowd-pleasing set.

Their program moved from Mozart to Respighi, Brahms, and Liszt, but the afternoon’s freshest moment came with the world premiere of Through Time by MIC and festival alumna Maddie Stephenson.

A seasoned duo with a long history at the keyboard

Aebersold and Neiweem have focused on music for four hands since 1981, and that long specialization showed in the way they handled the program’s demanding shifts in texture and mood. On Mozart’s Sonata for Piano Four Hands in F Major, K. 497, Neiweem noted from the stage that it is Mozart’s longest sonata and one that recalls the scale of his symphonies and concertos.

The performance had the assurance expected from two veterans, though the review noted that a middle movement felt a little heavy and that the repeats were skipped. When the pair turned to Respighi’s Fountains of Rome, however, their coordination came into sharper focus, with bubbling opening figures and seamless transitions that brought out the work’s color and sweep.

Stephenson’s Through Time gives the festival a personal new chapter

The program’s highlight was Stephenson’s Through Time, a new work for two pianos that the composer described as a reflection of her years at the Music Institute of Chicago and at the festival itself. Stephenson, who has long been part of the duo piano event, was present for the premiere.

Aebersold and Neiweem shaped the piece with a soft, glimmering atmosphere before a waltz theme emerged and the work faded into a quiet ending. The close was not perfectly aligned, but the performance still stood out as one of the afternoon’s most memorable moments.

Liszt, an encore, and the festival’s busy week ahead

The concert closed with Liszt’s The Fountains of Villa D’Este in Emil von Sauer’s four-hand arrangement, a choice that let the duo bring out the score’s difficulty and rapid passagework across two pianos. For an encore, they passed on Brahms’s Waltz No. 15 in favor of Hungarian Dance No. 5, a crowd-pleasing finish that sent listeners out on a bright note.

The festival continues this week with a tribute to America 250 featuring works by Copland, Bernstein, Ives, Corigliano, and others, performed by multiple Music Institute faculty pairings. On Friday, the EStrella Piano Duo of Elena Doubovitskaya and Svetlana Belsky is set to play music by Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Barber, and others, also at Nichols Concert Hall.

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