Season Opening Concert - The Silver-Garburg Piano Duo

The Silver-Garburg Piano Duo
September 28, 2005

Sivan Silver and Gil Garburg, two of the most brilliant and promising young Israeli pianists, founded the Silver-Garburg Piano Duo in 1997. Having performed extensively in nearly forty countries on the five continents, playing in halls as the Carnegie Hall and with orchestras such as the Israel Philharmonic, made them within a few years one of the remarkable piano-duos on the international stages, gaining enthusiastic acclaim by music audiences and critics.

Their concert schedule for 2004-5 includes three tours to North America including a performance hosted by Yzhak Perlman at New York's Lincoln Center; three tours to Latin America, performing in venues as Mexico City's Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes and Bogota's Teatro Colon; three tours to East Asia, including Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Shanghai, Taipei, Hanoi, Manila, Bangkok and more; and two tours in Australia, in Sidney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra. In addition, their engagements for this period include performances in more than a dozen European countries, in capitals such as Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Stockholm, Helsinki, Brussels, Riga and Moscow.

During this concert season the Silver-Garburg Piano Duo is a guest at numerous music festivals such as the Israel Festival in Jerusalem, Canberra Festival in Australia, Lapland Festival in Finland, "Black and White" Festival in Mexico, Felicia Blumental Festival in Tel Aviv, Riga Winter Festival and Liepaja Festival in Latvia, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and Passau Music Festival in Germany and "Musica Europa" Festival in Rome, where they are honoured as Artists in Residence, following their winning of the Franco Gulli Prize in 2003.

In addition to their recitals on two pianos and on one piano, four hands, the Silver-Garburg Piano Duo performs this season concerti for two pianos by Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Saint-Saens, Poulenc, Bartok, Schnitke and Damian with numerous orchestras, among them the Jerusalem Symphony, NDR (North German Radio) Radiophilharmonie, Mexico Philharmonic and soloists of the Bavarian Radio Symphony. Their newly released CD was recorded for NDR Hamburg and features works by Borodin, Brahms and Stravinsky.

Sivan Silver, born in Israel in 1976, and Gil Garburg, born in Israel in 1975, are graduates of the Thelma Yellin High School for the Arts. They studied at the Rubin Music Academy at the Tel-Aviv University and are studying for their "Solo" degree with Prof. Arie Vardi at the "Hochschule für Musik und Theater" in Hanover, Germany. Both were recipients of America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarships.

Ms. Silver and Mr. Garburg are first prize winners of numerous national and international competitions, both as soloists and as a duo. They have won the first prize at more than a dozen competitions, among them the "Brahms International Competition, Hamburg" and the "Hannover Musikhochschule Wettbewerb" in Germany; "Franco Gulli Prix", "IBLA Grand Prize", "Viotti Valsessia" and "Città di Pavia" international competitions in Italy and "Goralnik", "Katcz", "Clairmont" and the "Tel- Aviv Rubin Music Academy" Competitions in Israel.

Their debut CD, produced in 2000 by the Jerusalem Music Centre, includes works by Mozart, Schubert, Debussy and Natra. The duo has an extensive repertoire, including contemporary works written for and dedicated to them, such as "Harmonic Sound Image for Sivan and Gil" by Sergiu Natra, "Carillon", whose theme is built from the letters of their names, by Marcello Abbado, and the newly commissioned "At the Edge of a Spiral" by Lior Navok. Sivan Silver & Gil Garburg research some of the less accessible repertoire for piano duo and perform many unknown works by major composers of the 19th and 20th century.

Aside their intensive performing activities Sivan Silver and Gil Garburg present Master-Classes to Students at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, Sibelius Music Academy in Helsinki, Beijing Central Conservatory of Music, Australian National University, Singapore University, Ottawa University and further academic institutes. In July 2004 they were members of the jury at the "IBLA Grand Prize" International Competition. Since October 2001 they hold a teaching position at the Hanover Musikhochschule in Germany.