Student Matinee: Cheng² Duo

Siblings Bryan and Silvie Cheng have been performing together since childhood and now tour the world as the Cheng² Duo, bringing a rare, unguarded intimacy to the concert stage. Their performances have been called “truly exhilarating” and “absolutely captivating,” and audiences tend to leave wondering why they don’t go to more classical concerts. Cellist Bryan is the only musician in 40 years to have won top prizes at both the Queen Elisabeth and Geneva International Music Competitions. Pianist Silvie has served as Cecilia Concerts Musician-in-Residence and National Arts Club Artist Fellow. Together, they are JUNO-nominated for their latest album Portrait, a collection of works written for, or arranged by, the duo that explores their heritage as Chinese-Canadians who now call Berlin and New York home.

Their program “Night at the Museum” is a kaleidoscopic journey through time and across continents. Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte opens the evening with its famous, luminous stillness — music that sounds like a painting you want to linger in front of. Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, reimagined in the duo’s own arrangement, translates one of classical music’s great storytelling works into an epic conversation between cello and piano. Fazil Say’s Cello Sonata is a musical travelogue through four Turkish cities inspired by folk music and jazz that shaped the composer’s imagination. The evening closes with a world of its own: Portrait of an Imaginary Sibling, composed for the duo by Dinuk Wijeratne: a work that could only exist because of who these two are to each other.