Dana Muller and Gary Steigerwalt

Dana Muller and Gary Steigerwalt have performed as duo pianists for more than three decades, creating programs that encompass the historical and stylistic gamut of the piano four-hand genre. As recitalists, they have performed extensively in the United States, South America and Scotland. Festival appearances range from presenting Beethoven’s complete four-hand works at the Beethoven Festival, Oyster Bay, Long Island, to performances at Bethlehem Musikfest (Pennsylvania), Music at Penn Alps (Maryland), and Sevenars Festival and Musicorda Festival (Massachusetts). They performed regularly as members of Wistaria Chamber Music Society and with other western Massachusetts performance organizations such as the Pioneer Valley Cappella (Brahms, Ein Deutsches Requiem). In 2018 they made their debut appearances with Mohawk Trail Concerts and Arizona Friends of Chamber Music. Orchestral appearances include Pennsylvania Sinfonia, Orchestra New England, Pioneer Valley Symphony, and Mesquite Symphony Orchestra (Texas).

Active as promoters of new music, the couple has premiered works by Lewis Spratlan (Dreamworlds), David Sanford (The Silent Hearth), Donald Wheelock (Mind Games), Daniel Asia (Iris), Matthew St. Laurent (Overture for a Lucid Dream), Fred Lerdahl (Quiet Music for two pianos), David Macbride (Still Awake, Steal Away), Anthony Burgess (Schnee in Savosa), and Jan Mul (Concerto for Piano Four-Hands and Chamber Orchestra, North American premiere).

The duo has recorded four compact discs for the Centaur label. Their recording of four-hand works by early twentieth-century European composers (Centaur CD 2127) was hailed “an outstanding disc” by Fanfare, and their album of nineteenth-century Romantic compositions by Anton Rubinstein, Josef Rheinberger and Frederick Shepherd Converse (CRC 2390) was praised for its “panache and conviction” by www.allmusic.com. Also released by Centaur are two volumes (CRC 2272 and 2305) devoted to the four-hand works of Franz Schubert, excerpts from which can be heard in the soundtrack of the critically acclaimed movie Good Will Hunting.

Muller and Steigerwalt appear at schools, universities, and before music teachers’ organizations, offering workshops, master classes and lecture-recitals on a variety of topics. For ten years they wrote program notes and presented pre-concert lectures for the Musicorda Festival on the campus of Mount Holyoke College.

Dr. Steigerwalt is Professor Emeritus of Mount Holyoke College where he taught on the music faculty from 1981 to 2016. Dr. Muller’s teaching career encompasses institutional (University of Houston, University of Southern California, University of Hartford, Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College) and private studio instruction (Berkeley, California; New York, New York; South Hadley, Massachusetts).