On February 26-28, 2026, the pianist Orli Shaham and her brother, the violinist Gil Shaham join National Symphony Orchestra in Washington to perform the world premiere of a double concerto written especially for them by Reena Esmail. The Shahams then perform the new work with Virginia Symphony on March 13-14, and at the Aspen Music Festival on August 14.
Orli Shaham came up with the idea for this double concerto in 2020. She loves performing with Gil – they’ve been playing together all their lives – and there are few works in the repertoire scored for violin, piano and orchestra. Reena Esmail is a natural fit for this project. Orli loves her music, and Esmail herself is a pianist.
The three-movement composition is a substantial work, with lush orchestration and Esmail’s signature style of blending eastern music with western forms.
REENA ESMAIL In her own words
It's an incredible honor to write a piece of music that is uniquely for these two amazing musicians. The concerto was inspired by two images. The first image is on the cover of Gil and Orli’s CD, Dvorak for Two. I was very young when this album came out, and I remember being mesmerized by the image on the cover – Gil and Orli on two chairs, and in between them, an open door with light pouring through it. I was so mesmerized by that image. It was one of the first CDs I owned and I listened to it so much when I was young. When I think about Gil and Orli as a duo, that's the first image that still comes to my mind: bright, scintillating, and radiant.
The other image – the first one that came to me when I began to think about writing this piece – is of looking up at a sky that's full of huge, beautiful, and sometimes ominous clouds, and seeing a plane flying through them. The plane looks like the teensiest thing next to these massive clouds, and yet the clouds are just vapor. The plane is the only thing that's solid. However small that plane may look and however often it disappears and reappears, you always know that it's there, the one solid thing among mountains of ephemeral vapor.
That was a guiding image for this piece – that feeling of knowing that something solid and is there, and is moving steadily forward even when you can't see it.
Both of these artists have such distinctive interpretations of works that I love. Gil’s Barber Concerto is legendary. It’s one of my favorite concerti and I have his recording in my ear. Orli is such an incredible interpreter of Mozart – she's recorded all the Mozart sonatas and some of the concerti. The thing that I find inspiring about both of those composers is how their music has a transparent luminosity about it. In certain ways it's so simple and elegant, and yet because of that, you're able to hear so many layers in it. It's flexible, it's transparent, it's luminous. That was what I wanted to bring to this concerto.
My primary instrument is piano, so I really wanted to write a piano part that was robust and virtuosic, but also felt deeply fulfilling to play. I can also make my way around a violin, so I was able to feel my way through both the solo parts.
Writing a concerto for violin and piano is so mind bending. Both these instruments have centuries of their own concerto repertoire, as well as duo repertoire. At times, this piece is a piano concerto with a violin obbligato. At times it’s a violin and piano sonata embedded in an orchestra piece. At times it’s an intimate duo flowing through an environment of other instruments. It both responds to all these well-trodden classical forms, and serves as a counterpoint to them.
In addition, my work uses Hindustani classical raag as its melodic base. Each of the movements uses a combination of raags, but then connects them using Western classical devices of harmony, modulation et al, which are not part of Hindustani tradition.
Reena Esmail
February 2026