Our mission is to foster a joy and deep appreciation of the repertoire, performance skills, and pedagogical benefits of teaching music for piano four hands and two pianos, in a creative, collegial and supportive atmosphere.
Our program encompasses music from all periods and styles, including some of the great romantic and contemporary works, premier performances of new compositions by Australian composers, improvised jazz and music for pianos with percussion and strings.
Our educational focus is aimed at creating exciting opportunities for our young musicians to develop partnerships, ensemble skills, aural awareness and enable shared performance opportunities within the local community.
Since its inception, the Australian Piano Duo Festival has brought together many professional pianists from around Australia, and international guests, to perform in concerts and to give masterly instruction to tertiary and young pianists, many of whom experience for the first time, the shared joy of piano duo partnership.
The Australian Piano Duo Festival began in 2012, continuing biennially with festivals in 2014, 2016 and 2018. It was founded by the Artistic Director Jenni Flemming whose passion for piano duo performance began many decades earlier with her piano duo partner, Israeli pianist Brachi Tilles, with whom she continues to perform.
Jenni recognised the depth of experience of many piano duo teams within the Brisbane community, beginning with her own teachers Max Olding and Pamela Page, the Patrons of the Festival, and from within the Queensland Conservatorium and University of QLD teaching faculties. A glance at the programs of the past four festivals will attest to the abundance of duo teams of national significance that exist within Brisbane. The establishment of the festival is largely due to the generous financial support from the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, who believed in the importance of this program and its benefits to our students, together with the tireless work of the active members of the APDF Committee, Angela Turner, Stephen Emmerson, Gwyn Roberts and others. The education program has expanded to include regular concerts in the Brisbane City Hall Lunch-time series, the recording of a CD -Two's Company - in 2016, featuring young pianists in duet and two piano teams, and the recent video series of students and teachers performing selections from the AMEB's Collaborative Piano Syllabus.