Tommaso Giordani wrote operas and songs and was based in London and Dublin for the better part of his career. And always in the midst of life, the spectre is with us.)ĭelmoni's brilliant passagework and Rosen's earthy tones are well suited to putting across the various moods of this piece. (My interpretation of the work is as a quasi-religious dyptich of ominous death balanced by exuberant life. In the middle of this mad Rondo is a short passage where the mood of the Prélude returns, briefly, while the rest of the movement runs rings around it. The second movement shares the sense of precision but has a very different feeling made up mostly of fast runs, it is lighter, even amusing. It is dissonant and tightly organized to great effect. The first is eerie, spooky, even creepy, but with counterpoint as precise as that of Bach.

The Martinů Duo is a short and powerful piece with some very effective contrasts between the two movements. Delmoni and Rosen sound restrained by comparison, but they are just as expressive in a different and less direct way. This is in contrast to the more astringent tone adopted by Josef Suk in his live performance with André Navarra on Praga, a more typical East European sound. Overall, this performance is very smooth and polished, with moderate tempos and very clean intonation and articulation. The Adagio is searching, mysterious and dark, and it is given a sympathetic reading here. It's deceptively simple on the surface, but this economy transmits musical expression of great depth.ĭelmoni and Rosen play the Kodály Duo passionately and with a rich, resonant tone. His sound is sometimes similar to that of his countryman Bartók, but I find it more lyrical, introspective, and subtle. His roots run deep into the Hungarian folk tradition, which he studied and championed and then distilled into a very refined personal style. Kodály is neither Romantic not Modern he is sui generis, in a class by himself. The result is a fascinating and delightful program. For variety and contrast, they are presented with shorter baroque and classical works arranged for violin and cello. This recording brings together two important twentieth-century duos for violin and cello.

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