The Piano Guys

Concert Review

The Piano Guys, one of the most talented duets in modern instrumental music nowadays, performed a mini private concern at Birchmere Music Hall on October 29th in Alexandria, Virginia. I had a chance to attend their concern that day, and I was absolutely glad for being there. Speaking of instrumental music, these guys have a very good taste of music; their covers were on the various popular songs. The Piano Guys collectively performed ten pieces during the concert. “A Thousand Years”, “Beethoven’s 5 Secrets” and “Rockelbel’s Canon (Pachelbel Canon in D)”, the three beautiful pieces that drove the audience back in time of classical music or brought us to modern love story in pop songs by their Piano and Cellos.  

Like all songs, the Piano Guys’ songs were all about inspiration and passion in life. Each song has its own story, “A Thousand Years” showed a deep love from both of them to their children. The ultimate soundtrack of a “romantic” vampire movie called “Twilight”, was a big hit from Christina Perri. In the instrumental version of it, as inspired from John’s daughter, was the consonance of grand piano and classical cello (they named it as Bruce Lee). As the piano started off first in slow beat tempo in quadruple meter as the 4th note always is accented to emphasize itself, then the cello started off as replacement for the vocalist. The song actually was at a slow pace with piano playing as background. The rhythm, which was steadily slow at first then started to get faster towards the chorus; however, the meter was still the same in quadruple. The original version itself was a good record; however, this cover totally brought it to a new level.

In the same way, Rockelbel’s Canon (Pachelbel Canon in D) was also a consonance track. As the original song was mostly in slow tempo, the cover was played with much faster pitch. It was one of the most iconic songs from them. When the song played, the background theme was showing wedding theme background from their music video on Youtube. However, in contrast of other songs, this song used to emphasize the piano play, which made the cello played as the background with only 8 notes played over and over again. On the other hand, Steve, the guy who play cello, used his cello as the drum kit to make variety sound for their cover. As I already mentioned, their iconic song perfectly showed how talented they were. For over 20 years of performing together, they could play a song perfectly with their eyes closed or just lie on the bench while hitting all the keys with one leg in the air moving around with the beats.

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