QC piano festival expands to two days

If you like piano music, you can double your pleasure tonight in Bettendorf.

A husband-and-wife team — 88 Squared, the duo of married pianists Jeffrey and Karen Savage — will give a concert on the unique 1904 Pleyel double grand piano, at Asbury United Methodist Church, 1809 Mississippi Boulevard, Bettendorf, at 7 p.m. tonight.

“For the past three years, we’ve had the Quad City Piano Ensemble Festival and it’s been growing so much, we decided to make it a two-day festival,” event organizer (and pianist) Marian Lee said Friday.

The Savages are on the piano faculty of University of Missouri-Kansas City and they’ll be playing a program of French and American works, but not your usual Faure and Debussy, Lee said. “The program is a lot more innovative with audience-friendly new works.”

88 Squared has received critical praise from Singapore’s The Straits Times, American Record Guide, and Fanfare magazine. Praised as “gifted pianists” by David DeBoor Canfield of Fanfare Magazine and “a composer’s dream” by Lowell Lieberman, their performances have been called “fearless” (The Straits-Times) and “joyful and inspiring” (American Record Guide).

The duo’s performances have been broadcast on internationally syndicated programs, on National Public Radio stations across the U.S., and on Vietnamese Public Television.

“They’re presenting a really unique French-American program, because the Pleyel is a French instrument,” Lee said. “The Savages have a unique tie with this instrument, because back when the Pleyel double grand was in bad shape and we needed to raise money to get it rebuilt, the Savages, who had heard about the instrument, they volunteered to play a concert and raise money for it.”

By 1890, wealthy music lovers yearned to own two grand pianos for their salons, but most lacked the necessary floor space. Two grands were needed to perform both orchestral reductions of symphonies and piano concertos, according to a history of the Pleyel.

Inventing the double grand

To satisfy that demand, Pleyel and Company of Paris invented the double grand piano. The instrument combined two grand pianos into one – with two facing keyboards, and a new frame on which two sets of identical strings were mounted head-to-tail with their own bridges, but with a shared soundboard.

Pleyel’s instrument, patented as the “Duo-Clave,” began manufacture in 1897 and continued until 1946. It is believed that 74 Pleyel double grands were manufactured during this period.

The Pleyel double grand owned by the local Federated Music Teachers Association (FMTA) came to the Quad Cities by way of its last, previous owner, Joe and Thea Leclair. They acquired the piano while Joe was commissioned by the U.S. military in Paris. Upon her passing, Thea, a lifelong member of IFMC (Iowa Federation of Music Clubs), wished that the piano would stay in the QC and be played.

In 2010, FMTA voted to begin fundraising to restore Thea’s piano. In the 2017, FMTA acquired full ownership of the piano. On Nov. 21, 2017, the piano was moved to Premier Piano Service of Walker, Iowa, for complete restoration. On Oct. 26, 2018, the fully restored piano returned to the QC and is housed at Asbury United Methodist in Bettendorf, where Thea was a member for 50 years.

Research indicated this is the only Pleyel double grand piano in the Western Hemisphere (other than France) on which performances are possible, allowed and welcomed.

It is one of just seven Pleyel double grand pianos known to remain in the world. It has two separate, facing keyboards with two complete and separate sets of strings, on one shared soundboard. The resonance created by this design is akin to the extra harmonics created by a 12-string guitar – with over 460 strings.

“We’re really excited to welcome them back into town and hope that they’re pleased with the rebuild of the instrument,” Lee said of 88 Squared.

Tonight’s program

The program for the QC Piano Ensemble Festival includes performances of the following:

• Toccata from the Fifth Symphony for Organ – Charles-Marie Widor

• Lullaby in D-flat Major, Op. 76, No. 2 – Lowell Liebermann

• Variations on a Theme of Beethoven – Camille Saint-Saëns

• Souvenirs, Op. 28 – Samuel Barber (Two-Step, Hesitation Tango, Galop)

• Sonata No. 3 “Ballade” – Eugène Ysaÿe/Sean Chen (world premiere)

• An American in Paris – George Gershwin (a test performance in collaboration with the George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition)

The festival aims to encourage students of all levels of FMTA teachers to play duets, duos, trios, quartets, and concertos and to expose students and their families to the rare and historic Pleyel double grand piano.

On Saturday, the Savages are giving a master class at 10 a.m., which is free and open to the public. Then at 3 p.m., there will be a student ensemble concert at Asbury, with 23 student ensembles performing, and that is also free.

Tickets for tonight’s concert are $15 for adults and $5 for students, available online HERE, or at the door.

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