Belonging

CANCELLATION

Due to serious illness, the Bose-Pastor Duo has had to cancel their concert on Sunday.

Our sincerest apologies to all ticket holders.

Please phone 250-748-8383 with any questions.

Bose-Pastor Duo: Antonio Pastor and Pia Bose

Sunday, June 8 at 2pm

Two pianists “who are in perfect harmony and complement one another ideally”, Pia Bose and Antonio Pastor have garnered warm critical acclaim for their “remarkable dexterity and subtlety” (Versoix Région). Pia and Antonio currently serve as piano faculty members at the École Internationale de Genève and the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève, respectively. Their program explores the human-nature connection through works by Debussy, Carl Vine, Liszt and Fazil Say.
 

Programme

In times of turmoil, we often retreat to Nature in search of simplicity, to rejuvenate the body and soul; yet our inner forces as human beings rarely allow this repose to be long-lasting. The four-hand piano program they have selected highlights this duality through its extra-musical associations — from the atmospheric, contemplative refuge from the outside world to the overt, traumatic expression of it — and is an exploration of context through four groundbreaking works: Maurice Ravel’s arrangement of Claude Debussy’s Prelude to an Afternoon of a Faun, Carl Vine’s Sonata for Piano Four Hands, Liszt’s arrangement of Les Preludes, and Fazil Say’s Night. Unlike the three other works, Vine’s Sonata has links to tradition in form and genre and is meant to have “no specific accompanying narrative or poetic allusion”; but its section titles (such as “Meditation”) make us question context-based interpretation, within the piece and in this program as a whole. The musical illustration of Nature — and the human struggle to simultaneously connect with it and beyond it — is central to the program. This is especially relevant in the world today, in which music can serve as a bridge to understanding our common sense of belonging.

Background information

Since forming the Bose-Pastor Duo in 2012, pianists Pia Bose and Antonio Pastor have garnered widespread acclaim for their “sensitive, alluring, and exhilarating performances.” Praised for their “remarkable dexterity and subtlety” and their intimate connection on stage, the pianists have distinct personalities yet share their instrument and musical sensibilities “in perfect harmony, ideally complementing one another” (Versoix Région).

The husband-and-wife duo has received numerous honors and awards, including Second Prize in the 18th International Piano Duo Competition in Tokyo, Japan, interviews for Magma-Espace 2 (Radio Télévision Suisse) and Luxembourg’s Radio 100.7, and a featured article in Scènes Magazine. The pianists have appeared in major cities such as London, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Lisbon, Edinburgh, Luxembourg, Milan, Geneva, and throughout Switzerland. Notable venues where they have performed together or as soloists include the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the St. Martin-in-the-Fields Embassy Series, St. James’s Piccadilly, the Palais de l’Athénée, and Preston Bradley Hall, during WMFT radio’s live broadcast of the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts. In September of 2023, the Bose-Pastor Duo was invited to perform the inaugural concert of the Roser Piano and Keyboard Alumni Concert Series at the University of Colorado at Boulder, with “Dancing out of the Past,” a program they also performed for enthusiastic audiences at the San Francisco Noontime Concerts, and PianoFest Moudon and Schubertiade Sion in Switzerland. Audiences repeatedly lauded the duo’s charming rapport and its breathtaking, deeply moving performances.

Hailing from different cultural backgrounds (Indian-American and Andalusian) and having followed divergent paths, the pianists met in Switzerland, their shared country of citizenship. They each completed early studies in their native countries of the United States and Spain and later obtained the Diplôme de Soliste from the former Conservatoire Supérieur et Académie de Musique Tibor Varga, where they worked intensively with the late pianist Dominique Weber.

Pia Bose holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory, the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree, and her former teachers include Andrew Cooperstock, Marian Hahn, Joseph Schwartz, and J.Y. Song. She completed further study at the Universität Mozarteum Sommerakademie in Austria with Boris Bloch and also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in biopsychology from Oberlin College. Antonio Pastor holds the Diplôme d’Enseignement from the Haute École de Musique de Genève and the Profesor Superior de Piano degree from the Real Conservatorio de Música de Madrid, and his former teachers include Andrew Cooperstock, Sébastien Risler, and Fernando Puchol. Pia Bose and Antonio Pastor attended festivals such as the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, the Gijón International Piano Festival in Spain, and Rencontres Internationales Harmoniques Lausanne in Switzerland, and they were privileged to receive musical guidance from renowned artists such as Paul Badura-Skoda, Julian Martin, Robert McDonald, Boris Slutsky, Ana Guijarro, Alexei Nasedkin, John O’Connor, Bruno Canino, Blanca Uribe, Yoheved Kaplinsky, Marc Durand, Ann Schein, and Leon Fleisher.

Passionate educators, Pia Bose and Antonio Pastor serve as piano faculty members at the École Internationale de Genève and the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève, respectively.