ANDOVER, Mass.—The Music Department of Phillips Academy will present “Slava,” featuring pianists Barbara and Gerhardt Suhrstedt, at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 18, in the Timken Room of Graves Hall. This concert is free and open to the public. Graves Hall is handicapped accessible.

The story of “Slava” is a story of Russian treasures: masterpieces of Russian music, art and poetry that celebrate the “Golden Age of Russian culture,” yet powerfully express the dramatic socio-economic contrasts in Russian society under the Romanov Tsars. Because of the Cold War, many of the art works featured in “Slava” are only now being experienced and appreciated outside Russia. The Suhrstedts weave a tapestry of Russian music, art and poetry in the context of major historical events of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The presentation includes music of Glinka, Stravinksy and Rachmaninov; paintings of Perov, Repin and Kustodiev; and poetry of Pushkin, Nekrasov and Akhmatova.

In 1986, the Suhrstedt duo became the first piano duet team to perform for an American Liszt Society annual festival. They have given recitals in many of the nation’s prestigious concert series, including the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts in Chicago, the National Gallery of Art and the Phillips Collection Sunday Series in Washington, D.C., and the Temple Square Concerts in Salt Lake City. The couple has been featured in the Grand Teton, Wildflower, Garth Newel, Piccolo Spoleto and Gina Bachauer International Piano Festivals. During their six Russia tours since 1998, they have performed at St. Petersburg’s historic Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory and have given three concerts at the Grand Palace in Peterhof.

Barbara Suhrstedt is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Gerhard Suhrstedt is a graduate of Furman University. They met and married while in graduate school at Boston University’s School for the Arts. The duo’s imaginative programming, a blend of familiar and neglected works for piano duet, ranges from Mozart to Stravinsky and includes their own and commissioned four-hand arrangements. They have received much critical acclaim for their multi-media presentations “Four Hands Fantastique: French Music, Art and Poetry, 1870-1920” and “Slave: The Gloary of the Arts in Tsarist Russia."

The Suhrstedts regularly present workshops in the piano duet medium for colleges and piano teachers’ associations. They have been artists/clinicians for a number of Music Teachers National Association state conventions, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Louisiana and Wyoming. The couple has shared concerts and workshops both in Russia and in the United States with pianists from the Stravinsky School of Music and Art in Lomonosov.

For more information, please contact the Music Department at 978-749-4995 or by e-mail.