Contiguglia, Richard and John

Contiguglia, Richard and John , brilliant

American duo-pianists; b. identical twins, N.Y., April 13, 1937. They began taking piano lessons in early child-hood, and grew in parallel congruence. They played in a duo recital in public when they were six, and continued to develop in close consanguinity; they composed music for two pianos and transcribed solo works for their concerts. When they were 12, Percy Grainger invited them to play at one of his recitals; he subsequently befriended them and gave them valuable ad-vice. Later they took piano lessons with Jean Wilder and with Bruce Simonds at Yale Univ., and upon graduation received a Ditson Fellowship, which enabled them to study with Dame Myra Hess in London. They made their professional debut in London in 1962, playing piano Four-Hands; in 1964 they made a major European tour. In addition to the standard literature for duopianos, they performed piano transcriptions for two pianos and for piano Four-Hands of obscure works. In 1971 they gave an all-Liszt concert in London, which included his piano transcription of his symphonic poems Mazeppa and Orpheus, and of his arrangements of excerpts from Bellini’s Norma and La Sonnambula and Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In 1972 they played Liszt’s transcriptions of Beethoven’s Ninth Sym. in London, arousing considerable curiosity, and repeated this exhibition in N.Y. in 1974. They gave the first performance of Liszt’s Grosses Konzertstück über Mendelssohn’s “Lieder ohne Worte” for two Pianos, composed in 1834, in Utrecht on Oct. 19, 1986. They further played duo-piano works by Bartòk and Grainger. For a brief period, they split their original fetal name into two fungible parts, Conti-Guglia.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire