KGNU’s Sanford Baran interviews Christina and Michelle Naughton, renowned piano duo, ahead of their performance at the Colorado Music Festival. The sisters share their early musical influences, starting with piano at age four. They discuss the challenges and rewards of playing as a duo, particularly the unique dynamics of performing on one piano versus two. They explain their careful selection of pieces and highlight their work with living composers, innovative projects, and the excitement of playing Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos in Boulder.
Sanford Baran: Today we’re thrilled to welcome Christina and Michelle Naughton, the dynamic piano duo renowned for captivating audiences worldwide. The Naughton sisters play with an intuitive synchronicity that is nothing short of extraordinary, delivering performances that are both technically impeccable and emotionally resonant.
They’ll be performing at the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder on July 28th, showcasing their remarkable talents in Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos. Welcome, Christina and Michelle. Such a pleasure to be with you.
Naughton Sisters: Great to be here.
Sanford Baran: To begin, could you share how both of you were drawn to music?
Naughton Sisters: Absolutely. I think our love of music began before we ever touched a piano or before we were even born. Apparently, my mom listened a lot to Bach’s Goldberg Variations while she was pregnant with us, and it was years later that I discovered that was one of my favorite pieces. So that developed without me knowing, and before we could even talk, we loved watching videos of kids songs. Apparently we were watching a video once and it was kind of a sad song and my mom looked over and there were tears running down our cheeks. At that point she knew that music moved us. And that was obviously before we played the piano or even knew what music really was. Obviously it meant we loved it.
Sanford Baran: But of course, you did find your way to the piano.
Naughton Sisters: We did! At the age of four. Our mom was our first teacher.
Sanford Baran: And you found your way to conservatory. At some point, I guess you determined that you both wanted to play as a duo.
Naughton Sisters: We did. When we were in conservatory, our teachers were kind enough to make time for us both as a duo and as teachers. So with our degrees, we’re in solo piano, but we were performing as a duo and studying as a duo as well during that time.
Sanford Baran: What are some of the challenges and rewards of performing as a piano duo and of course, as sisters?
Naughton Sisters: Well, particularly with this concerto that we’re playing, the Mozart, it’s like a conversation between two siblings. That is literally how it’s written as he wrote it to play with his own sister. You can hear all those elements. You can hear the teasing, the having fun, the arguing, anything that you would find between two siblings, he writes it so that you could hear it in the music. It’s nice to have composers who had siblings who were very familiar with instruments.
Sanford Baran: Can you explain the differences between playing four hands on one piano versus performing on two pianos? Do you have a preference?
Naughton Sisters: Four hands basically means we’re sitting at one piano and we’re playing at the same time, but it’s only on one piano. Two pianos is when we’re playing at the same time on two pianos. And I think it’s really hard to say whether we have a preference. They each have their own strengths. A lot of orchestral works work really well for two pianos. It’s like having an orchestra at your fingertips.
The four hands, it’s written each for different settings as well. With the piano four hands, it’s uniquely, I believe, the only form of chamber music where the players share the instrument. So there’s that aspect. It takes a little bit of time to get used to because it feels a little bit like somebody else is pedaling for you, somebody else has some of that control. The space is a little bit different, but we’ve learned to really enjoy that. And you can really feel someone’s energy when there’s that kind of proximity and you’re literally sharing even the mechanisms of the instrument. It’s kind of a surprise. Some of the things you have to think about – I didn’t realize playing piano with four hands, you actually have to have really strong stomach muscles. I mean, who would expect that?
Sanford Baran: Really? How so?
Naughton Sisters: You have to bend backwards in certain ways to give the other person room to play what they need to or to have the space they need to do what they’re supposed to do.
Sanford Baran: I have to say that it’s amazing to watch you two when playing a piece for four hands. It’s like choreography, how your arms gracefully interweave and crossover. With such precision and delicacy, are there markings in the score as to which hand plays where?
Naughton Sisters: It is written into the score. I will say we occasionally have our own way of doing specific sections, but it’s for the most part written in. But there are very interesting distributions that you can sometimes find. We have the same size hands, so that can also make things interchangeable in certain passages.
Sanford Baran: What draws you to the pieces you like to play?
Naughton Sisters: We do love playing pieces that have never been performed or written for us as well. That’s something we really like incorporating. Within the actual framework of a program, I mean, programs and CDs are a little bit different. For a live program, I think of it almost like putting together a meal. So everything has to balance out and go together and flow the right way, even the order of the pieces you play. And when you change those things, it can change the feel of the entire program. It’s really a fun process to think about, and also to think about the space you’re playing in, or if you already know the audience ahead of time, have played in the place before, sometimes you get some ideas that way as well.
Sanford Baran: By the way, on a recent Colorado Music Festival program, the orchestra played John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine. There were massive forces up there on the stage playing it. And it turns out, on one of your albums, you recorded a version of this for two pianos. Pretty amazing, actually, as it really does capture the energy and sheer fun of this piece.
Naughton Sisters: Yeah, it was a whole lot of fun to do that. It was something that came up when we were having coffee with John Adams, and he literally just asked us, “Do you think that piece might work for four hands?” We were like, “Yeah!”. That was really neat to see in his mind what he really thought about certain parts, because you hear the piece, obviously. So for so many years you have a certain impression, then you get to really get in there and imagine it. I would say sometimes these four hand or two piano arrangements of orchestral works, they’re almost like doing a black and white painting or portrait of something, if that makes any sense.
Sanford Baran: I’m drawn these days to a number of innovative recordings by duos, trios, even solo artists who can pull off sounding like an entire orchestra.
Naughton Sisters: Yeah, absolutely, and different things get highlighted. For instance, maybe the notion of rubato or taking time is different with two people or three people than it is with the entire symphony. Textures become different because you don’t have a million instruments. So it just highlights different aspects of what the composer was intending, I think.
Sanford Baran: When you have two grand pianos up on the stage, that in and of itself is almost a full orchestra.
Naughton Sisters: It is like that. I think Brahms realized that, and it’s unfortunate because he apparently burned a lot of these arrangements, but he used to actually draft symphonies and works on two pianos before the orchestra.
Sanford Baran: What does a typical practice session look like for you both?
Naughton Sisters: It’s different whether we’re performing or just practicing. If every time we’re in a new location to perform, if we can get into the space we’re playing in and we each kind of hear what we’re hearing. It’s nice to have that extra person actually because when you’re alone, you can’t really go to the back of the hall and listen. I would say just in general, though it might look like the coordination and the lining things up would be a big part of what we do, oddly enough that is a very small part of our process. Maybe it’s because when we start trying to get on the same page musically and artistically and feeling the music together, that’s what lining up almost comes from. It’s like an offshoot of what we’re feeling rather than some method, almost like synchronized diving, where you would just be lining things up in almost a physical, athletic manner. We definitely do practice individually, and we get familiar with each other’s parts as well. It’s almost like learning three parts in a way. You learn yours, you learn your sister’s, and then you learn the melding of them together, which is its own thing.
Sanford Baran: Any plans for having piano duet works be specifically commissioned with you in mind?
Naughton Sisters: Absolutely. I mean, right now, we’re doing a couple of charity commissions. One that’s coming up that we’re very excited about is, James Lee III is writing one. It’s a companion piece to the Poulenc Piano Concerto, meaning it uses almost the same instrumentation, so they can essentially be paired together, and it’s also based on the theme of gymnastics – the ballet aspect of it, the athleticism, endurance. It’s something we’re very excited about, as well as pieces for four hands piano. We just did one by Jennifer Higdon. We’re always looking for, as we were talking about before, any kind of music that either hasn’t been discovered or hasn’t been played much or hasn’t been written. This fall will be featuring a segment on American Pulitzer Prize winning female composers and we’ll devote part of our recital programs to that.
Sanford Baran: Are there any new directions you’re exploring in your music?
Naughton Sisters: I would say even since the pandemic, there’ve been a lot of new programs and more out-of-the-box ideas, things like lecture recitals, which we’ve started incorporating. We’ve played and discussed the art of duo piano and how it works and how we think of it in the context of chamber music in general. Just to continue along the lines of new works and things by living composers, having those discussions and actually collaborating, there’s something interesting about it. When you play the older things, at first you connect it with a human being, but there’s nothing like actually seeing this as a living person and asking them about what they think, what they wrote. It almost makes you see everything you play in a different light. You have a question, you send an email, you get a response, something you wish you could do for everything.
Sanford Baran: Well, we very much look forward to your performance of the Mozart Double Piano Concerto at the festival on Sunday, July 28th. The entire Mozart program that evening will be conducted by the amazing New Zealand conductor Gemma New, whose conducting style is also quite wonderful to watch.
Naughton Sisters: We can’t wait to finally be in Boulder and to meet Gemma New. We’ve met, but we have not worked together musically before. We met in a car in St. Louis a number of years ago, but this time to actually be on stage together will be wonderful.
Sanford Baran: It’s been a real pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for being with us.
Naughton Sisters: Oh, we’re looking forward to it. We enjoyed speaking with you.
