Duo Pleyel: Beethoven's Eroica Symphony

Duo Pleyel play the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall on Wednesday 25 November, starting at 7:30 pm. The duo is Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya and Richard Egarr, and the programme is Beethoven's Symphony no. 3 in E flat major 'Eroica', Op. 55 and Symphony no. 1 in C major, Op. 21, both performed as four-hand piano arrangements by Carl Czerny.

That's the thing to get your head around first: these aren't the symphonies as you'd hear them with a full orchestra. They're arranged for two people sharing one piano, and the arrangements are by Carl Czerny, Beethoven's student. The duo describes Czerny as an undervalued figure — perhaps the most important teacher and virtuoso before Liszt, a pupil of Beethoven who had a unique insight into his master's music and was often entrusted with performing it. That's the line they're following here: hearing the symphonies through the hands of someone who knew the composer from the inside.

Nepomnyashchaya and Egarr have played together for eight years, and they take their name from their 1848 piano. In May 2023, they began a three-year recording project of the complete Beethoven symphonies in these four-hand arrangements by Czerny. This concert is part of the University of York's celebrations of the bicentenary of Beethoven's death in 2027, and it gives you a chance to hear four of these arrangements before the recording comes out in the spring. They'll be back later in the season, on 3 March 2027, with Symphonies nos. 6 and 8.

Tickets are £7.00 to £20.00, and the concert starts at 7:30 pm at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, YO10 5DD.