PRESS

 Especially with compositions that set pictorially rich scenes to music, it makes sense to let these moments live before ones mind’s eye. Such a composition is the Swan by Saint-Saëns. While I have always heard this swan gliding majestically on a mirror-smooth lake, this performance opens up a different imagination. The water surface is clearly rippled, waves can be heard. And the bird swims actively and observes its surroundings and reacts to them. Her Majesty has become more bourgeois.
This innovative approach of the music can also be heard in the other interpretations of the duo Mr and Mrs Cello. Piatti’s Elegy for instance is similarly enlivened. In Bach’s arioso however, my feeling is that the melody-voice is too strongly structured, while the accompanying voice makes itself quite inconspicuous except for the final chords. Anyway, with melodic expression and nuanced playing, Mr & Mrs Cello seem to entangle themselves in a lively love story. With soft bowing and sonorous cello tone they show their musical view, which is complemented by technical finesse. In the duos by Haydn and Offenbach this joy of playing is audibly lived out without emphasizing virtuoso characters.