Duo Violin-Cello

THE PERFORMERS

All projects are born at some point. This one came into being about twenty five years ago from a desire, felt by so many performers, to spend more time together sharing the best pieces in the repertoire, in this instance, for violin and cello. Over all these years, without missing a single season, we have shared countless musical projects and hundreds of chamber music works. With this CD, we have succeeded in giving our testimony and in fulfilling what was probably the first of our dreams together as young musicians. What excitement we felt in front of Ravel’s sonata score and what a challenge it posed! What an adrenaline rush with Kodály! Other performers are certain to understand this and we hope to provide them with a touch of inspiration. Regarding the music chosen, it would be impossible not to include, in an album like this one, the two great pillars of the repertoire for these eight strings, Zoltán Kodály’s Duo and Maurice Ravel’s Sonata, an explosion of creativity after the dearth of repertoire for this kind of duo during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Both composers manage to dress their music in such an incredible way that this ensemble does not appear bare and the polyphony is complete. In contrast to these two great works, we have chosen three pieces of easier and more emotive listening which, nevertheless, we feel are representative of the different vital issues reflected in their composition; from the spiritual conflict transmitted in P. Vasks’ Castillo Interior to the popular frenzy of I. Xenakis. Closing this album is our own arrangement of Béla Bartók’s Romanian Dances, providing our musical contribution to the repertoire for these two instruments. It is worth noting that, however incredible it may seem, the instruments used for this recording have been made by the hand of the violinist himself, Marc Paquin, a professional luthier as well as violinist.