For 37 years, Yaara Tal and Andreas Groethuysen have been sharing the stage as a piano duo, and they have made a total of 17 appearances at the Ruhr Piano Festival. Each one of their concerts has been a unique, special moment for the audience. The two musicians are also passionate music sleuths who love to unearth rare manuscripts; more often than not, they conceive special, unique recital programmes for the Festival. Thus, in 1998 they honored Max Reger’s 125th birthday; in 2008 they reflected the Festival’s focus on Schubert in their programming, followed by a selection of Wagner arrangements for the 2013 annual theme “Transcriptions and Paraphrases”. They responded to the Festival’s French focus in 2018 with a recital of works by Gouvy, Saint-Saëns, and Debussy. In 1997 in Bochum, their first appearance at the Festival had been moderated by the preeminent German music critic of the day, the late Joachim Kaiser; since then, Andreas Groethuysen has often introduced the works himself with knowledgeable, entertaining comments.