The repertoire for unaccompanied violin and cello, if not large, has always been distinguished, as this important new album demonstrates with important compositions from the 20th-century alongside recent works from the 21st, supremely played by the highly-acclaimed Duo Zappa. Here, we present the Eight Pieces by the Russian Reinhold Gliere, best known for his Ilya Mourometz Symphony and The Red Poppy ballet. These impressively colourful Pieces date from 1909. Erwin Schulhoff, a superb composer and pianist, was born in Prague in 1894. After an important musical and political career he was interned in the Wulzburg concentration camp where he died in August 1942. His Duo of 1925 forms a fascinating correlation between Debussy and Schoenberg in a purely personal idiom.
The two works by contemporary Swiss composers Martin Wettstein and Massimiliano Matesic were written in 2004 for the Duo Zappa. They are the most important recent contributions to the repertoire and receive outstanding performances, in superb sound. The final work is a fascinating transcription of a Passacaglia in G minor by Handel by Johann Halvorsen, nephew by marriage of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, concluding this outstanding new CD which Guild presents with pride.

Portrait - Daria and Mattia Zappa

The repertoire for unaccompanied violin and cello, if not large, has always been distinguished, as this new album demonstrates with important compositions from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, played by the highly acclaimed Duo Zappa. Here, we present the Eight Pieces by the Russian Reinhold Glière, best known for his Third Symphony Ilya Muromets and the ballet The Red Poppy. These impressively colourful Pieces date from 1909. Erwin Schulhoff, a superb composer and pianist, was born in Prague in 1894. After an important musical and political career he was interned in the Wülzburg concentration camp where he died in August 1942. In a purely personal idiom his Duo of 1925 forms a fascinating correlation between Debussy and Schoenberg. The two works by the contemporary Swiss composers Martin Wettstein and Massimiliano Mateic were written in 2004 for the Duo Zappa. They are the most important recent contributions to the repertoire and receive outstanding performances, in superb sound. The final work is a fascinating transcription of a Passacaglia in G minor by Handel, made by Johann Halvorsen, nephew by marriage of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg.