Surrey’s piano-playing Bergmanns are back with another Coffee Concert series at the arts centre, starting with a performance with a like-minded couple.
On the morning of Thursday, Oct. 3, Elizabeth and Marcel Bergmann (as The Bergmann Duo) will team with Anne Louise-Turgeon and her husband, Edward Turgeon (Duo Turgeon) for a “two pianos, eight hands” concert called Pianopoly.
United on stage, the two musical duos are known as Canadian Piano Quartet.
“We just got home from the Maritimes, where we played with Duo Turgeon,” Elizabeth Bergmann said Monday. “They live in Sault Ste. Marie, and we did three concerts on a mini tour.”
They debuted as a quartet a year ago for White Rock Concerts‘ season-opener, she noted.
“That was our first official concert as Canadian Piano Quartet, but we’ve known each other for around 25 years and have crossed many times since then, at festivals and other events,” Bergmann said.
The Oct. 3 concert at Surrey Arts Centre’s Studio Theatre kicks off Surrey Civic Theatres’ Coffee Concert Series, now in the fourth year with the Bergmanns as hosts. As with all four concerts in the 2019-20 series, the 11 a.m. performance is preceded by a social hour, with hot beverages and treats served starting at 10 a.m. For tickets ($33/$26), visit tickets.surrey.ca or call 604-501-5566.
Bergmann said “the timing was right” for the creation of Canadian Piano Quartet with the Turgeons.
“Over the past four or five years we always said, ‘We should get together and perform,'” Bergmann explained. “It just evolved from there. We invited them to come to White Rock for a concert last year, and next February we’ll go to Sault Ste. Marie to perform with them.”
The Pianopoly concert in Surrey will feature J.S. Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto #3,” Rossini’s “William Tell Overture,” Saint-Saens’s “Danse Macabre” and more in a late-morning showcase of Canadian talent.
“Our bodies are programmed to perform at night,” Bergmann said with a laugh, “but I have to say, we’ve gotten used to performing in the morning. What we love is meeting people, the audience, especially new people and also those who come every time. It’s great to have the relationship with an audience like that.”
This year’s series also features Wintersong on Nov. 28 (with guest tenor Benjamin Butterfield, performing works from Franz Schubert to Randy Newman), a More with Fewer concert on Jan. 16 (classical hits and a few not-so-classical tunes with violinist Mark Fewer) and Clarinetastik! on April 9 (with clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester).
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