Bartok's 44 Duos go well beyond the scope of their original purpose of illustrating a graded violin method. Sensitively alert to the popular origin of these pieces, based on folk songs from Central Europe to Algeria, Antoine Tamestit and Alexandra Preucil present a strikingly free and fresh reading for violin and viola. As preludes to their performances, they have interspersed several original recordings captured by Bartok during his field-trips.
Morton Feldman's cycle, The Viola in My Life, is four individual compositions that utilize various instrumental combinations with the viola. The works is a beautiful succession of delicate sounds during which Feldman, through the interplay of sound and silence, alters and transforms time. "This work has accompanied me like a secret, an almost silent meditation on what the viola means in my life. Through it I have experienced how much this instrument connects me to listening, to patience, to inwardness. Here Morton Feldman is not composing in order to shine, but so as to make us hear the infinitesimal, the unspeakable - that is what has touched me profoundly, and I want to share it with the listeners." (Antoine Tamestit)
Thibaut Garcia is one of the most acclaimed classical guitarists of his generation, praised for a playing style that combines virtuosity and poetic sensitivity. Born from a deep artistic friendship with guitarist Antoine Morinere, this album offers a fresh take on Bach's masterpiece Goldberg Variations, now reimagined for two guitars. The arrangement, from Garcia and Moriniere themselves, is the result of a full year of work during which, quoting the artists, they focused on "how to adapt the keyboard work for two guitars, while preserving the illusion of a single performer". Twin guitars helped in their artistic endeavour: the album is recorded on two guitars cut from the same tree, and realized especially for the project by French luthier Hugo Cuvillier.
