The Brun–Hale Duo
The duo began in a college practice room, over a disagreement about the tempo of the Debussy finale that has now outlasted three concert managers and one marriage (neither of ours). Ten years on, it is the spine of both careers: forty concerts a season, one shared library of scores with two sets of pencil markings, and a rule that whoever drives chooses the rehearsal order.
Tomas Hale is a pianist who does not accompany — a distinction he insists on and every review eventually makes for him. The duo's repertoire runs from Beethoven's variations to sonatas written for them, and their tenth-anniversary album, Night Songs, was released on Lantern Records in the spring.
Night Songs
Fauré, Debussy and Poulenc, recorded close and late in a converted chapel: sonatas played the way they feel at the end of a recital rather than the beginning. The Chamber Review made it a five-star record and called it 'a duo record on which nobody accompanies anybody', which is the nicest thing anyone has said about either of us.
Booking the duo
The duo travels with three prepared programmes a season — one French, one Viennese, one built around a new commission — and will happily fold in a work your series has reasons of its own to want. Repertoire and technical notes are in the download below; dates go through Harbourlight Artists.
“Two people finishing each other's arguments.”
The Chamber Review