Bartok/ Kodaly/ Ligeti - Accords contrastants

Father and son Amiram (violin) and Maxime Ganz (violoncello) present a highly demanding programme on their first joint CD recording with solo sonatas and duos from the first half of the 20th century. Starting with the Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7 (1914) by Zoltán Kodály, the Hungarian composer and folk music researcher who, along with Bartók, had the most significant influence on the development of a Hungarian national musical identity. From the latter comes - already from the time of his American exile, the year 1944 - the Sonata for Violin solo, Sz. 117, which is formally inspired by Bach's sonatas and partitas, and is full of breakneck virtuosity. The first part Dialogo of the two-movement Sonata for Cello solo was composed by György Ligeti, also from Hungary, in 1948, and then five years later added another movement, Capriccio, to the work, with which he completed the work for the sonata. The second duo on this album, Maurice Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello, dates from 1922; While audiences and critics were initially rather hostile to the change in Ravel's style that took place here, the work today is received as one of the most poetic compositions by the French composer.