Two monumental concertos, two pianos and two emerging Australasian talents filled Lucas Parklands on Sunday afternoon, as Australian pianist Reuben Tsang and New Zealand pianist Madeleine Xiao took on works by Brahms and Rachmaninoff. The concert formed part of Lucas Parklands’ 2026 Season of Piano Excellence and offered an unusual opportunity to hear two of the Romantic repertoire’s largest orchestral works transformed into something more intimate.
Reuben led Johannes Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, with Madeleine taking the orchestral part. After the interval, they exchanged roles for Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor. The scale of the undertaking was considerable. These were not arrangements that reduced the music to a sequence of familiar melodies. Each pianist had to carry dense orchestral textures while maintaining the clarity, momentum and emotional shape of the original concertos.
It was also the first time Reuben and Madeleine had performed together. “It’s a game of trust,” Reuben said before the concert. “You can’t see how they’re phrasing anything.” The two-piano format required them to communicate through sound, timing and an acute awareness of what the other was doing. That trust was evident throughout the afternoon.
Brahms jokingly described his Second Piano Concerto as “a tiny, tiny piano concerto with a tiny, tiny wisp of a scherzo”. In reality, it is a vast four-movement work lasting close to 50 minutes. Reuben suggested the description may have reflected both Brahms’s humour and his critical attitude towards his own compositions. “He must have been very critical about what he put out there and how he represented himself,” he said. “So I could understand why he would want to sell it short.” There was certainly nothing small about Sunday’s performance.
Madeleine established the opening horn call with a warm and spacious sound, allowing Reuben’s answering phrases to emerge with an almost improvisatory freedom. The two pianists found considerable variety within Brahms’s thick textures, retaining the music’s symphonic weight without allowing it to become congested.
The second movement, Brahms’s supposedly “tiny” scherzo, brought a darker and more turbulent energy. Reuben had described it as “almost haunted” and “devilish”, and the performance captured that quality through sharply defined rhythms and tightly coordinated exchanges.
The celebrated Andante brought a marked change of atmosphere. Madeleine played the orchestral cello melody with a sustained, vocal quality, while Reuben allowed the solo line to unfold without excessive sentiment. Before the performance, Reuben spoke of keeping the imagined sound of the cello in his mind. “There’s a sense of sustain,” he said. More broadly, his aim was “to make it speak, make the music speak”. The movement became the most intimate part of the concerto, the two pianos no longer seeming like soloist and orchestra but equal partners in a private conversation.
The finale lifted the mood without losing refinement. Its dance rhythms were light and clearly articulated, closing a demanding performance that earned Reuben a prolonged standing ovation.
Madeleine then took the solo role in Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, one of the best-known and most openly emotional works in the piano repertoire. She sees the concerto as more than a progression from darkness to triumph. “It is more of a gradual process of rediscovering confidence and finding your voice,” she said. That understanding shaped her performance. The opening chords were carefully paced, accumulating force without being rushed. When the principal melody appeared, it had direction and purpose, rather than being treated simply as a familiar Romantic tune. Madeleine said the opening needed to be understood as a larger structure, rather than as a succession of individual chords. The performer must consider “how much echo and space you use in each group” while keeping the tension alive.
Reuben brought considerable experience to the accompanying role, having previously performed the concerto’s solo part. His awareness of its structure allowed him to support Madeleine while giving the orchestral writing colour and independence. Both musicians had spoken about the difficulty of recreating an orchestra using two instruments with essentially the same sound. “It’s more about colours than numbers,” Madeleine said. The challenge was to suggest strings, winds and the sustaining power of an orchestra while recognising that a piano note begins to decay as soon as it is played.
In the Adagio sostenuto, Madeleine resisted the temptation to overstate its famous melody. “The music itself, what is written, has a lot in it,” she said. “If you just let it play itself, it is really quite magical.” That restraint gave the slow movement warmth without allowing it to become indulgent. The finale then gathered pace through increasingly brilliant exchanges between the two pianos, culminating in the broad return of its great lyrical theme. The conclusion brought the audience to its feet for a second standing ovation.
The pianists returned for a brief encore, playing Johannes Brahms’s Waltz in A major, Op. 39, No. 15, in its original piano four-hands version. Its flowing melody and gently rocking accompaniment provided a light, graceful close after the scale of the two concertos. The duet was brief and playful, and the audience clearly enjoyed it.
Both performers are now preparing for the next stage of their studies in the United Kingdom. Reuben will begin postgraduate study at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, while Madeleine is heading to London’s Royal Academy of Music. Their Lucas Parklands appearance caught them at a significant point: already capable of taking on two of the largest works in the repertoire, but still at the beginning of careers that will take them well beyond the intimate Montville stage.
For the audience, it was an opportunity to hear two emerging musicians testing their individual voices while discovering, for the first time, how they could play together.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy and timeliness, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability, or availability with respect to the article or the information contained within for any purpose.