For Princeton Pianists Ensemble, Five Pianos are Better Than One

PIANO TIMES FIVE: The Princeton Pianists Ensemble turns playing the instrument into a collaborative activity, with up to 10 musicians performing at one time. The group comes to Richardson Auditorium on November 17.

By Anne Levin

Most piano recitals are performed by one musician at one piano. Less common are concerts for four hands — two pianists at one keyboard.

How about 10 pianists playing five pianos at the same time? That’s the idea behind the Princeton Pianists Ensemble (PPE) at Princeton University, which turns playing the piano into a collaborative activity. On Friday, November 17, the group of some 35 amateur yet accomplished pianists performs at Richardson Auditorium, in a program ranging from Debussy to the flying theme from the soundtrack of the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. 

“It’s something I don’t think you’ll see anywhere else,” said Roberto Lachner, a sophomore at the University and a member of the ensemble. Like his colleagues, Lachner was a serious piano student throughout his childhood. While there are a few music majors in the group, most are focused on other subjects.

“We come from all sorts of backgrounds,” said Lachner, who is at the University’s School of Public and International Affairs and is thinking of minoring in environmental studies and Latin American studies (he is a native of Costa Rica). “Most are in things like math, physics, international relationships, English, and economics. We are all people who played piano a lot in school, and invested a lot of time in it. This is a way for us to keep up with the skill. We have to practice a lot.”

Practicing together is no easy task. In the Woolworth Music Building every Sunday, the group wheels three pianos from rehearsal rooms into McAlpin Hall, where two instruments are permanently located. “It’s super logistically difficult,” Lachner said. “Outside of that, if we can find a room with two or three pianos, we sometimes practice there in sections.”

Concerts by the ensemble range from two to five pianos. While there is music in the piano repertoire for four hands, finding compositions for 10 pianists at two instruments is another matter. “All of the music we perform, we arrange ourselves,” Lachner said. “So for example, before we performed the pas de deux music from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker last year, members on the summer break examined the original orchestral score, and came up with an arrangement for five pianos. You have to take a lot into account. It’s not easy.”

But it is worth the effort. “It allows us to play really cool arrangements of stuff you wouldn’t be able to play [on piano] normally,” Lachner said. “And the audience gets that big feeling you would get from hearing an orchestra.”

PPE was founded a decade ago, and typically holds two major concerts on campus each year. Members, most of whom are undergraduates, perform individually at the Princeton Coffee Club in New College West every Thursday.

In 2016, the group was designated the official artists-in-residence at Richardson Auditorium. This past fall, members had an exclusive master class with renowned pianist Daniil Trifonov. In the past, they have performed at Steinway Hall in New York City, and held a piano battle with the Harvard Piano Society.

“We are music lovers of all stripes, from budding composers to crazy computer coders, from the occasional philosopher to international piano prizewinners,” reads the PPE website.

In addition to Debussy’s La Fille Aux Cheveux de Lin and E.T., the November 17 concert at 8 p.m., which is titled Aurora, will include traditional piano arrangements and a medley from the “Mario” video game series. For tickets, which range from $8 to $15, visit tickets.princeton.edu.

“It’s kind of like going to hear an orchestra, but it’s all on pianos,” said Lachner. “As far as we know, this kind of thing doesn’t exist anywhere else.”