The Gugg Piano Duo

The Gugg Piano Duo play Cowdray Hall at the Aberdeen Art Gallery on Thursday 12 November, from 12:45pm to 1:45pm. It's a lunchtime concert, so it's one you can fit into a working day rather than a night out.

The programme brings together four pieces from the Romantic and Classical traditions. They open with Brahms' Academic Festival Overture in C Minor, followed by Beethoven's 8 Variations on a Theme by Count Waldstein. The second half is taken up by Dvořák's From the Bohemian Forest and Smetana's Moldau. It's a substantial hour of music, with the Dvořák taking up nearly half the set on its own.

The duo is Tereza Gugg-Kalabova and Johannes Gugg. They met at 14 on a course for highly gifted students at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and started winning national and international prizes within months. They're married now, and as Kleine Zeitung put it, 'inseparable both in life and at the piano'. They won the International Competition Franz Schubert and Modern Music in 2025 and have been named BBC New Generation Artists for 2026-2028, a title that means this performance will be recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Beyond that, they've taken first prize at several competitions, including the Suzana Szörenyi Duo Competition in Bucharest, the ArtePiano Competition in Castelnuovo di Farfa, the Franz Schubert Competition in Jeseník, and the Vlastimil Lejsek Piano Duo Competition in Brno. They once stepped in for a duo evening with Martha Argerich and Cristina Marton-Argerich at the Athenaeum in Bucharest, and have played at the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Brahms Hall of the Vienna Musikverein, and the Stefaniensaal of the Musikverein Graz.

It's a pay-what-you-can ticket, so you can decide what you want to give on the day. The concert runs from 12:45pm to 1:45pm at Cowdray Hall, inside the Aberdeen Art Gallery on Schoolhill.