This concert was a further instalment in the wondrous evolution of my exposure to the astonishing talents of Duo Enharmonics, the piano duo team of Nicole Chao and Beth Chen, the most recent of Wellington Chamber Music’s Sunday Concert Series. Until that sensational presentation I attended almost two years ago, featuring the duo’s performance of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”, I’d been something of a voyeur regarding the talents of these musicians, relying upon enthusiastic reports from other reviewers of things such as the “energy and force” of their “outstanding teamwork” (Steven Sedley, Middle C, September 2020), and especially in regard to music I myself dearly loved, such as Mozart’s KV 381 Duo Sonata, or Ravel’s “La Valse” in a four-hands transcription. Here, now, was a second chance for the word to become flesh for me in musical terms, and especially with the delectable Ravel work on today’s programme!

A quick look at Middle C on my part brought forth some previous “other” enthusiastic opinions regarding the music-making of Duo Enharmonics, made up of the piano duo of Nicole Chao and Beth Chen (formed in 2017, and whose names are here alphabetically ordered) – to my surprise, I hadn’t actually heard them play before, perhaps confusing my somewhat over-vicarious enjoyment of the reviews of their performances by my colleague Steven Sedley with the “real thing”, and especially in the case of a concert featuring a presentation for four hands of Ravel’s “La Valse”, along with the Mozart Sonata we heard today. The memory is obviously not what it was…..

Duo Enharmonics, the Nicole Chao and Beth Chen piano duo team, have become regular performers at the St Andrew’s lunch time concerts. This year they offered a journey from a graceful Mozart Sonata of 1765 through Rachmaninov’s nostalgic Russian group of six pieces of 1894, to the grand spectacular duo piano arrangement of Ravel’s La Valse of 1920.

Some years ago both Nicole Chao and Beth Chen studied with Thomas Hecht at the New Zealand School of Music. They formed a piano duo partnership and have been close friends ever since. They went overseas, studied further, came back, and carried on playing together.

​Four hands playing on one keyboard is a very difficult form of chamber music. There is no contrast, no different tone colour or timbre to separate or contrast the voices. The two pianists have to think and play like one. Such unanimity was evident in this concert. It started with Debussy’s charming, well known Petite Suite, though better known in its orchestral version. It is a playful piece and was played with lovely sonority and clear phrasing.

These two pianists, born in Taiwan, gained their master’s degrees at Victoria University, and have studied elsewhere. They have returned to Wellington with a host of awards and prizes in their brief-cases.  They have both become highly polished players who have recently joined forces to play piano duets, and duos, no doubt, which they do with a unanimity of feeling and technical mastery that is not usually acquired in so short a time.

Their programme combined a couple of satirical duets with solo pieces from the normal, yet highly demanding, repertoire.