Famous Works for Piano Duo
Piano duo Jeroen and Maarten van Veen were raised a musical family. The brothers started playing together at a young age before entering the conservatory. They studied at the Utrecht Conservatory with Alwin Bär and Håkon Austbø, and Maarten continued in Amsterdam with Ton Hartsuiker. The Van Veen brothers made their debut at the Festival Wien Modern in Vienna in 1993. They played with various orchestras and worked with conductors like Howard Williams (Adams), Péter Eötvös (Zimmermann), Neal Stulberg (Mozart & Bartók) and Robert Craft (Stravinsky). They were prizewinners of the 4th Murray Dranoff International Two Piano Competition (U.S.A, 1995). In 1998 they founded the International Piano Quartet and then worked with Robert Craft, who recorded Stravinsky’s Les Noces with them at the famous Abbey Road studios in London (2000). The New York Times review called the recording "the best recording ever". Jeroen van Veen became one of the world’s foremost champions of Minimal Music, while Maarten specializes in contemporary repertoire. This bundle features several iconic works from the 2 piano repertoire: Schubert’s eternal Fantasy in F minor, Saint-Saëns’ Beethoven Variations, Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps, Ravel’s La Valse, Russian Rhapsody by Rachmaninoff, Paganini Variations by Lutoslavski and Monologues by Bernd Alois Zimmermann.