A four-hands piano recital tour dedicated to classical modernism sees the duo of Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich perform at Carnegie Hall (25 October), in Chicago (28 October), Chapel Hill (30 October) and Berkley (1 November). The programme is centred on the US premiere of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Keyboard Engine subtitled ​“A Construction for Two Pianos” — a multi-layered work which was composed for Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich in 2017/18 as part of a co-commission from the Aldeburgh Festival, Carnegie Hall, KölnMusik GmbH, and Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley, and praised by The Guardian as ​“a fierce challenge to their astonishing virtuosity”. Earlier this summer, the duo gave the work’s first European performances at Aldeburgh Festival, where Aimard concluded his eight-year tenure as Artistic Director in 2016, and at Kölner Philharmonie. Another contemporary composer that Aimard champions, Birtwistle comments: ​“He [Aimard] realizes the dreams of the composer — certainly, this composer”.

Aimard and Stefanovich complete their programme with Ravel’s two miniature tone poems Sites auriculaires and Bartók’s folk-inspired Seven Pieces from Mikrokosmos from the composer’s best-known pedagogical work, arranged by the composer for two pianos for himself and his wife. It was in Bartók’s music that the duo scored a Grammy nomination — Aimard’s seventh — with their recording of his Concerto for Two Pianos and Percussion. The tour also features the mystical and religious themed musical frescoes Visions de l’Amen by Olivier Messiaen written for himself and the foremost interpreter of his piano works Yvonne Loriod, with both of whom Aimard enjoyed close personal and professional ties. When the duo gave a performance of the suite in London last year, The Guardian saluted their reading with a five-star review, commenting that ​“it was quite simply impossible to imagine it better done”.