Biography

In the great and often underappreciated art of piano duo playing, Sivan Silver and her partner Gil Garburg are setting a new standard: acclaimed by audiences and critics alike, the duo has been invited time and time again by top orchestras, festivals, and concert organizers. They have performed in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Vienna Musikverein, the Salzburg Festspielhaus, the Sydney Opera House, and the Berlin Philharmonie; they have concertized in approximately 70 countries on five continents; and they collaborate regularly with such orchestras as the Israel Philharmonic, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Melbourne Symphony, and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie.

Their recording of Mendelssohn’s concertos for two pianos and orchestra, with the Bavarian Chamber Philharmonic under Christopher Hogwood, has been called “breathtaking” (Bayerische Rundfunk), “extremely exciting” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), and “brilliant” (Rondo). Their Stravinsky ballets CD has been described as “grandiose” (Pizzicato, Supersonic award), “thrilling” (Fono Forum, CD of the Month) and “wonderfully enchanting” (Der Neue Merker). The Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung raved about the “lyrical sensitivity and the ravishing technical mastery” of the duo, noting that only rarely does one experience “such spontaneous shouts of ‘bravo’” at the end of a concert. The Independent concluded: “What a wondrous evening!”

The two Israelis, who live in Berlin with their son, can be heard during 2018-19 in North and Latin America, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and in numerous European countries.

The duo will perform over twenty times a new concerto, based on Brahms’s G minor piano quartet, with orchestras in Berlin, Vienna, Jerusalem, Bratislava, Spokane, Klagenfurt, Tel Aviv, and Bremen. The Austrian composer Richard Dünser, with whom they closely collaborate, successfully combined the two original versions by Brahms himself into a concerto for piano, four hands and string orchestra written for the duo.

Silver and Garburg will celebrate Bohuslav Martinů’s 100th anniversary, performing his vigorous two pianos concerto with the Brno Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de Lorraine in a tour culminating at the Konzerthaus Vienna. Playing a cycle of the complete Beethoven piano concerti will mark the festive reopening of the Christchurch Town hall, rebuilt after the 2011 earthquake.

Other current unique projects include a Schubert-Mendelssohn chamber program for piano four hands and string quartet and premiering new movements by Anna Segal, integrated into Saint Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals. In addition, early 2019 will see the release of their most recent recording on Berlin Classics, with works by Liszt, Schumann and Saint Saëns and Debussy.

Concerti by Bach (Luxembourg Philharmonie), Mozart (Slovak Philharmonic Hall), Mendelssohn (Berlin Philharmonie) and Poulenc (Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) as well as numerous recitals (Konzerthaus Berlin) round up their current season’s concert list.

In 2014, the Graz University for the Arts unanimously chose the Silver-Garburg Duo to occupy one of the few extant professorships for piano duo. Previously, they taught at the Hannover Musikhochschule, the elite German piano school at which they themselves completed their studies in 2007 under Arie Vardi.

Programmes

Some examples from the repertoire for piano duet

• Programme I
  Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (original version by the composer)
  Stravinsky: Petrushka (original version by the composer)
  
  
• Programme II
  Mozart: Sonata in C Major, KV 521
  Schumann: Six Etudes in Canon Form, Op. 56 (transcription by Bizet)
  Mozart: “Der, Welcher Wandert” from The Magic Flute (transcription by Liszt)
  Schumann: Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op. 47 (transcription by Brahms)
  
  
• Programme III
  Mendelssohn: Songs without Words Op. 62 & Op. 67 No. 1
  Rachmaninov: Six pieces, Op. 11
  Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (original version by the composer)
  
  

Some examples from the repertoire for two pianos

• Programme I
  Brahms: Variations on a theme by Haydn in B flat major, Op. 56b
  Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
  Schumann: Andante and Variations in B flat major, Op. 46
  Liszt: Concerto Pathétique in E minor
  
  
• Programme II
  Brahms: Sonata in F minor, Op. 34b
  Martinů: La Fantaisie
  Shostakovich: Concertino in A minor, Op. 94
  Borodin: Polovetsian Dances from Prince Igor
  
  
• Programme III
  Saint-Saëns: Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op. 28 (transcription by Debussy)
  Liszt: Sonata in B minor (transcription by Saint-Saens)
  Ravel: Introduction and Allegro (original version by the composer)
  Rachmaninov: Suite no. 1 in G minor, Op. 5 “Fantaisie-Tableaux”

Reviews

An orchestral sound

Piano duo Silver-Garburg in Parktheater Augsburg, 28th January 2013

The concert given by the piano duo Silver and Garburg would certainly have scored full marks if seen as a pantomime performance. Body language strongly underlined their piano playing making it sometimes difficult to see which hand belonged to whom. A sitting ballet transformed into colourful and supple music and leaving an almost orchestral sound behind.

In Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream we heard the light tones of violins and flutes and the low tones of horns; in the Wedding March the typical tutti and in overture and finale the Wagner preceding woodwind and brass intervals. Tempo and virtuosity breathtaking, e.g. in Stravinky's Petrouchka. Faultless artistry.

Silver-Garburg's fourhanded piano playing rises above precision and consonance in its movements, empathy and emotions. They are a married couple which may contribute to their musical closeness and they formed their duo in 1997 in Israel. They have won more than a dozen national and international prizes since then.

The Parktheater concert was started with a curiosity as it was Mozart's birthday. Silver-Garburg played Liszt's arrangement of "Der, welcher wandert" from the Magic Flute, a march with a sighing motive at a moment of trial of the royal couple. It is interesting that the restless wanderer Liszt chose this part for adaptation.

Stephanie Knauer