Duo AmalMonday February 11The Earl Cameron Theatre at City HallDuo Amal are pianists, still in their 20s, who after successful careers as soloists began to perform as a duo two years ago.Piano duos are unusual, but Duo Amal is more so in that Yaron Kohlberg is Israeli and Bishara Haroni is Palestinian: they came together to inspire hope for those locked in conflict.To see them performing together is indeed an inspiration to push harder and more imaginatively to work out disputes of all kinds .That the two share remarkable musical chemistry and are also good friends adds much more to that hope and indeed, in Arabic, ‘amal’ means hope.The pair performed at the Earl Cameron Theatre on Monday as part of the Bermuda Festival of the Performing Arts. The performance included ‘Fantasy for Piano, Four Hands in F Minor D 940’ by Franz Schubert.For this piece, the pianists shared a piano to produce their purposeful yet poignant performance. Written in 1829, it was a good choice with which to open as it was to be performed in a deliberate manner and with an often-repeated theme, which gave the audience the opportunity to become accustomed to a form of performance that would be new to many of them.By comparison, a very new and modern piece for two pianos followed. Duo Amal commissioned composer Avner Dorman to write this piece, and it was completed just last year. Entitled ‘Karsilama’, it is short just four minutes in length and notable for its strong 9/8 time and exhilarating eastern flavour. It was fascinating to see each pianist’s role, and how they melded their parts to create a very exciting whole.‘Classical Symphony Op 25’ by Sergei Prokofiev was composed in the early part of the 1900s. This was, in turn, very new for its time.The programme notes themselves clarify the work: ”Prokofiev incorporates his own harmonic language with distinctively modern progressions and angular melodic lines, synchronising old and new styles into a vital artistic product. In fact, Prokofiev’s First Symphony represents one of the earliest examples of 20th-century Neoclassicism. It is neither a copy nor a parody of a classical work, but more like a tribute or salute.”More new and exciting music led the second half of the concert and it was spectacular. Samir Odde-Tamimi’s piece, ‘Amal’, was also commissioned by the duo. In this piece there is innovative use made of the strings, discordant passages, and with some juxtaposition from harsh, jarring sounds to purer notes, with the cohesion of the pianists critical in producing the dynamic impact of this abstract piece.Four-handed piano music was, apparently, something of speciality for Sergei Rachmaninov, as his ‘Suite No 1’, also called ‘Fantasie-Tableaux for two pianos, Op 5’, clearly shows.It illustrates four extracts of poems, written by Mikhail Lermontov, Lord Byron, Fyodor Tyutchev and Aleksey Khomyakov.Watching carefully it was possible to see that each pianist was carrying out their specific part of the dialogue. And so, while it was whimsical at times and emotional at others, the overall impact of this work is big and rich and demonstrates so well why a piano duo is such a powerful and exciting way to perform.