At 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, January 19, pianists Katherine Murray and Bruce Murray will present Piano 2025, a program of twentieth-century music for two pianos. Featured are two of the most popular works in the two-piano repertoire, John Adams’s Hallelujah Junction and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Suite No. 2. The program also includes works by Ferruccio Busoni and Arvo Pärt.
“The two-piano medium came into its own in the twentieth century,” Bruce says. “Beethoven and Schubert wrote nothing for two pianos. Mozart wrote only a modest sonata, and the Romantics contributed little of importance. But in the twentieth century, many major composers took up the cause. Our program sets Rachmaninoff’s Suite from 1901 as one bookend and John Adams’s great Hallelujah Junction from 1998 as the other one.”
The concert will be held in the Porter Center and is free and open to the public.
Bruce is a Steinway Artist and former Brevard resident. From 2003 to 2012, he served as Dean and Artistic Administrator at Brevard Music Center and taught music at Brevard College. Since 2012, he has taught at Miami University of Ohio and has devoted himself to providing free music to his community, for which he was twice named Citizen of the Year in Oxford, Ohio.
Katherine is the organist at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Brevard. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and later studied piano and voice at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. After moving back to Brevard from Boston in 2022, she has enjoyed a dual career as the president and owner of a healthcare consulting firm and as a classical musician throughout the Southeast.