Settle into your seat as the lights go down. Onstage, the piano gleams in a pool of light, its lid raised like a sail. Then the first chord rings out, and the story is underway. A roomful of strangers becomes, for a little while, one audience, leaning in together.
The protagonist of Corvallis-OSU Piano International’s 2026–27 season is, of course, the piano. Its story begins in broad daylight, with a wolf loose in the public library. Then, one Sunday afternoon at a time, it becomes an opera house, a puppet theater, and a mystery still under wraps. In May, it meets its twin and sails out among the planets, and next summer, it resounds beneath an open sky while the sun sets over the vines.
The piano can’t play a single one of these roles alone. Every one needs a partner, so let’s meet this season’s extraordinary partners.
Sundays at Four
The Steinway Piano Series brings three of them to the Lynne Hallstrom Detrick Concert Hall at PRAx.
Yekwon Sunwoo arrives first, on November 8. With him, the piano becomes an opera house, then a village dance hall: Liszt’s paraphrase of the famous quartet from Verdi’s Rigoletto, then the Mephisto Waltz, in which the devil grabs a fiddle and the wedding guests never stand a chance. The first Korean pianist to win gold at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Sunwoo also performs Rachmaninoff’s Moments musicaux, written 130 years ago this autumn by a 23-year-old who badly needed the money.
On February 21, Behzod Abduraimov turns the piano into a puppet theater. In Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka, a puppet at a Shrovetide fair comes to life, and one pianist has to play the puppet and the whole jostling crowd around him. Brahms, Liszt, and Debussy’s suite with “Clair de lune” lead us there. Abduraimov once recorded Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini on Rachmaninoff’s own piano at Villa Senar, the composer’s Swiss home. (Imagine lifting that lid.)
Kate Liu completes the series on April 18. In 2015, she won the bronze medal at the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, along with the Polish Radio prize for the best performance of mazurkas. Her competition videos have drawn millions of views and a devoted following online. Her role this season is still being written: She confirms her program in January. Every good story needs one entrance nobody can predict.
Single tickets are $30 and students pay $5, but the best seat in the house is a season ticket: all three recitals for $75.
Two Pianos in May
On Sunday, May 2, at the LaSells Stewart Center, the piano gets to meet its twin. Rachelle and Robin McCabe are sisters, longtime duo partners, and, in Rachelle’s case, Artistic Director of Corvallis-OSU Piano International.
We start with Johannes Brahms, whose Variations on a Theme by Haydn reached print for two pianos before the orchestral version, so the piano got there first. Then the sisters set off an orchestral supernova: four movements of Holst’s The Planets, in the composer’s own two-piano version. Mars marches on a relentless five-beat tread, Venus shimmers, Mercury darts past, and Jupiter, king of the gods and Holst’s “Bringer of Jollity,” booms in big-hearted, then pauses mid-revel to sing a melody broad enough to fill the sky.
Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door; students attend free.
Saturday Morning with a Wolf
Now, back to the wolf. The season opens at 11 a.m. on Saturday, November 7, with our Family Concert at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library. Instead of house lights dimming, there are children wriggling on the carpet, parents clutching coffee, a buzz of excitement no usher could hush. And, if all goes according to Sergei Prokofiev, a wolf.
Peter and the Wolf begins with introductions: The narrator presents each character by its sound, so when the wolf finally prowls in, every child hears him coming.
Eight young musicians tell the story, and the piano plays most of the cast. Pianists sharing the keyboard become Peter, the duck, the wolf, Grandfather, and the hunters, while the cat slinks in on clarinet and the bird flutters on flute, just as Prokofiev wrote them. Our own Michael Beachley narrates, and for a morning, the library’s Meeting Room becomes a forest, costumes and all. It’s free, so bring the whole family, especially anyone who has never heard a live concert. There’s no better first one.
Prokofiev gets a curtain call too. The McCabes’ program includes his “Classical” Symphony, and May 2 happens to mark exactly 91 years since Peter and the Wolf first met an audience. The composer who opens the season comes back in the spring to see how the story turns out.
Dusk in Philomath
Piano in the Vineyard began in the summer of 2020 as Corvallis-OSU Piano International’s first live event during COVID-19, with picnickers spread apart on the grounds of Lumos Wine Company, near Philomath. After months of empty halls, people were together again, hearing music in the same air as the musicians, remembering how much they had missed it, and how much it matters. I think this is why Piano in the Vineyard sells out summer after summer. It is a magical place to hear music.
The format is much the same: music on an outdoor stage, accompanied by blankets and picnics and a glass of delectable Lumos wine. Next summer’s dates are July 23 and 24. When tickets go on sale, don’t wait.
In the vineyard, no one has to dim the house lights. The sun lowers them itself, gilding the vines and drawing long shadows across the picnic blankets, as the first notes rise into the open evening air. From the wolf onward, the piano takes on a whole cast of characters, and under the darkening sky, it plays its last role of the season with the partner every story depends on: you.
Bring a child to the library on November 7. Bring a friend to PRAx. Every note is better shared.
~ Matt Goodrich
