About us
Coming from different professional experiences but sharing the same artistic and aesthetic values, the Italian pianists Alessandra Di Gennaro and Michele D’Ascenzo have founded in 2019 the Dirac Piano Duo: two different personalities that, once at the piano, breath together.
Everything began when we were ten-years-old. We met each other in the class
of Prof. Caterina Imbrogno and under her guidance we shared the keyboard for
the first time, experiencing the joy of playing piano duets. In 2006 we won the
First Absolute Price at the “Adriatico Music Competition” in Ancona; from that
moment on, a lifelong process of mutual learning started.
We both studied in the class of Elena Matteucci at the Conservatory “A.
Casella” in L’Aquila, our hometown, where we both obtained our Graduate
Diploma with top marks and full honors in 2015.
Since then we have followed for a while different paths: Alessandra has moved to the Netherlands, where she studied at the “Royal Conservatory of The Hague” with Ellen Corver, Slava Poprugin and David Kuyken focusing on chamber music and contemporary repertoires, and Michele has studied at the “Talent Academy” in Desio, Milan, under the guidance of Vsevolod Dvorkin and he prioritized the solo repertoire, attending the periodic lessons of Natalia Trull (for more infos about Michele’s solo activity please visit his site).
We have carried out individual careers in two different parts of Europe,
privileging different repertoires, nevertheless we have constantly influenced
each other, confronting our views and discussing about artistic issues despite
the geographic distance.
Finally in 2019 we felt the urge to put together all our shared ideas and
experiences into a coherent project and that’s how Dirac Piano Duo was born:
two different personalities in a lifelong process of constant mutual influence
that, once at the piano, merge into an entangled sense of oneness.
The duo made its debut in the Netherlands in 2019 for “Haagse Kunstkring”
and has been invited to perform by renewed Institutions in Italy, Switzerland
and Holland like “Settembre Classico”, “Rassegna Giovaninarte”, “Agimus
Roma”, “Oosterhout Klassiek” etc.
In 2022 the author Alberto Cima Vivarelli dedicated a biographical profile to
Dirac Piano Duo in his book “Piano 4 hands. Artistic evolution and relevance of
the didactic”.
OUR NAME
We took inspiration for our duo’s name from Paul Dirac, the British physicist
who formulated the equation that describes the quantum entanglement.
According to this physical phenomenon, once two particles experience a shared
state, they are no longer separate entities but exist as one, and this remains
true even when they are separated by a great distance.
In our perspective, the phenomenon theorized by Dirac highly symbolizes
many aspects of our story and our idea of sharing music as duo.
It is our believe indeed that piano four-hands playing is the most intimate form
of chamber music imaginable: the physical proximity of the duo partners and
the sharing of the same instrument are unique features that bring the
interactive side of the chamber music process into a next level, both musical
and extramusical.
More than in any other kind of musical interaction the piano duet medium
allows a powerful and energetic interchange happening simultaneously on
physical, emotional, and spiritual levels, where the two individuals merge
together in a process that can be considered irreversible, as Dirac states and
our personal story confirms.
Also from a more personal point of view in fact, our story testifies that sharing
the keyboard at such an early stage of our learning process influenced indelibly
our musical development, even if we lately followed different paths.
We always felt in many respects “entangled”, and now that we are part of Dirac
Piano Duo, we couldn’t be more.
OUR MISSION
As piano duo we decided to prioritize the original piano four-hands repertoire
rather then the two-pianos’ one: in the last century it has been extensively
stigmatized as an !inferior genre” and even today it still suffers from this past
misjudgment despite its unquestionable value.It is our mission to bring that value up with fresh but faithful executions that take into serious consideration the historical context in which that repertoire was born and the significant changes the music society has undergone since then.
Besides the classical works, we give a
special focus to the contemporary
repertoire for this medium, which is at
present almost unknown, unperformed and
undiscussed although it embodies
masterpieces of undoubted artistic quality.
That’s why we propose, among the others,
contemporary programs, with which we
investigate this perspective: we are no
more only pianists, but also performers in a
wider meaning.
The piano four-hands genre in the last
decades is witnessing a proper
compositional “renaissance” and we want to
be active part of this process by
commissioning ourselves new works to
young and talented composers.
In 2020 our collaboration with the Chinese
composer Ching-Fang Teng brought to life
“Entanglement”, the first piece dedicated to Dirac Piano Duo, a proper homage
to the medium and to its endless compositional potential.
Alessandra’s interest for the most various aspects concerning the piano four-
hands medium has been conveyed in a rich and organic research paper named
“Piano four-hands, once again”, which has been presented in August 2021
during the “PGVIM International Symposium”, a conference organized by the
“Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music” of Bangkok.
In November 2021 the thesis has won the Frans Schreuderprijs held by EPTA
(European Piano Teacher Association).
You can read the thesis by clicking here.