The Piano-Piano Association
Founded by a small team of enthusiasts around an internationally renowned piano duo, the Berlinskaïa-Ancelle Duo, the Piano-Piano Association is dedicated to promoting and showcasing the 2-piano and 4-hand repertoire and its variants.
Despite the popularity of this genre, both among amateurs and professionals, the number of events dedicated to it worldwide can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
However, from Bach to Glass, via Mozart, Chopin, Debussy and Rachmaninoff, all the greatest composers have tried their hand at the genre, signing timeless masterpieces, defended by the greatest performers!
The Association brings together a multi-faceted project comprising:
- outreach programmes for school audiences and amateur players
- an academy and an international competition for future professionals
- a catalogue and a sheet-music collection open to all
- an international festival as the flagship of the overall project : the Rungis Piano-Piano Festival
- festival projects abroad, recording projects and much more
The piano duo is a genre that deserves to be discovered. Like the string quartet, the trio and other chamber music ensembles, four-hand and two-piano playing offers truly extraordinary and unique musical and sonic possibilities.
Playing together is a joy. As musicians we know how much sharing a score is synonymous with conviviality, fun, complicity. While keeping his own personality, each musician opens up to the other, progresses in order to build a common, intellectual and sensitive vision of the work.
A fortiori when the instrument is the same; the pianist must reinvent himself technically to both keep his uniqueness and blend in with the sound of his partner.
The audience bears witness to it: the complicity of piano duos is a delight to watch and to hear. The dialogue that emerges between the two artists, between the two instruments, is a conversation between equals. Sharing this intimacy with the audience opens up moments inevitably filled with emotion.
The President
Antoine Bruno
A multi-faceted endeavour that takes us a little further each year. This project reveals to the public the little-known repertoire of piano duos, as well as the artists who devote themselves to it and those who wish to do so. Because a duo is far more than two artists playing together. Beyond the work to be interpreted, you must know how to listen to one another, watch one another, breathe in unison and answer each other to bring the score to life. This cannot be improvised. It must be learnt. That is the purpose of the Academy, which welcomes each year pianists who wish to steer their career towards the duo.
The Academy offers them high-level training, along with support at the start of their career. It is unique in France and, for that reason, plays an essential role in the future of this art form.
Artistic Direction
Ludmila Berlinskaïa & Arthur Ancelle
Both born of lineages of celebrated performers, both accomplished soloists, Ludmila Berlinskaïa and Arthur Ancelle form a duo defined by an unfailing rapport. Through their energy on stage, original programmes, innovative concert formats and exchange with the audience, they aim to help give the piano duo a place equal to that of other chamber music ensembles.
In a short time, the duo has built up a rich repertoire of the greatest "hits" for two pianos and four hands, rare works, exploring both original compositions and transcriptions enriched by the many achievements of Arthur Ancelle: Francesca da Rimini (Jurgenson), Romeo & Juliet (The Song of the World), After a reading of Dante etc.
Each season, they are the hosts of the most beautiful halls: Auditorium of Radio France, Salle Gaveau, Philharmonies of Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, Salle Zaryadye, Moscow Conservatory, and they make their debut at the Philharmonie de Paris in 2022.
Guests of prestigious festivals, such as the Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad, the December Nights festival in Moscow, the Tokyo Spring Festival, Rota das Artes in Lisbon, Klavier Raritäten in Husum, the Lisztomanias, the Solistes at Bagatelle or the Pianofolies of Le Touquet, they also collaborate with renowned orchestras, such as the Saint-Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Freiburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Ulsan Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Orchestre of Ile de France, the Orchestra of Picardy, and chefs of all generations: Nikolai Alexeev, Arie Van Beek, Jader Bignamini, Lucie Leguay, Rebecca Tong…
Backed by an intense recording activity as a duo, soloists and chamber musicians, Ludmila Berlinskaïa and Arthur Ancelle have already released 8 albums together, all extremely well received and awarded by the international press (Editor's Choice of Gramophone, Choc of Classica , Album of the Year from Le Monde newspaper and Liberation newspaper, Pianist Maestro, etc.).
Interview
Interview
The new edition of the Rungis Piano-Piano Festival is in the making. Once again this year, the programme you are presenting promises to be both singular and innovative. What is your secret for keeping it that way?
A.A. Artistic direction comes with a duty to constantly renew oneself. The repertoire for two pianos and four hands invites us to do just that, it is so vast! It would be a mistake to rest on past achievements or to stick only to the emblematic works. And I think I can say that discovery is part of the DNA of the Rungis Piano-Piano Festival. The audience would be surprised to find anything repeated in our programming.
L.B. This festival, entirely devoted to this repertoire, opens up extraordinary perspectives and directions that have yet to be explored. It is unique in France. We have grown accustomed to seeing and hearing ensembles in which different instruments answer one another. But here, two concert grands, on the same stage, resonate and vibrate together. That alone is a discovery! And it drives us to go further — to take a chance on rediscovered or entirely new works.
Would you say that the philosophy of the Rungis Piano-Piano Festival lies in exploration, in research, and therefore in its ability to "open up new discoveries"?
A.A. A piano duo, through the face-to-face it suggests, calls for symbiosis and a communicative energy between the pianists. The audience receives that energy because it is genuinely "spectacular"! The piano duo is the most perfect mirror of sharing. It expresses itself through the fusion that takes place between the two performers, whatever the genre or period of the work being played. And that fusion creates an intimacy into which the audience is invited to step, and to identify with. It is in this space that emotion is born — and for some of our contemporaries, this can be a real discovery, an inner exploration.
Thanks to this festival, and the world that comes with it, we discover treasures: artists, works… It is stimulating and rewarding. We are nourished both artistically and humanly, and we are so happy to bring along with us renowned artists, young talents (the duos of tomorrow!) and a loyal, ever-growing audience.
In the press
Drawing their strength from a taste for sharing, risk and exploration, Ludmila Berlinskaïa and Arthur Ancelle are two inseparable pianists, a close couple on and off stage.
« The Franco-Russian duo never stops climbing musical heights» Le Monde
« Year after year, these two become the leaders of original and explosive piano duo. » Libération
« Sensational Pianists » (Fanfare), « brilliant, playful » (Diapason), « cultivating their duality in a supernatural dimension » (Le Monde), their « superb technique » (Classica), their « synchronization giving the impression of a single pianist » (musicweb-international), and their « truly dazzling playing » (fonoforum) place them among the leading piano duo on the international scene.
English 
French