★★★★★
Most of the interesting classical stuff nowadays is found on small labels. Claves is Swiss, sometimes too much so, but every now and then it comes up with a cracking recital like this. Certainly, no corporate label would ever get behind a set of duets for violin and cello, even with star performers (which these are not).
The music here is the thing. An opening duo by Bohuslav Martinu is one of that Czech composer’s immersive dialogues, overheard over a garden fence and so interesting you pretend to be weeding the lawn so long as it continues, which doesn’t feel halfway long enough.
Five minutes of Kaija Saariaho packs a double espresso punch. Maurice Ravel’s violin-cello duo of 1920 is a tribute to Claude Debussy that never bends the knee or doffs the cap. Why Paris prefers Debussy to Ravel is one of those weird quirks of the fashion industry. This Ravel is a muted masterpiece and must be heard.
The rest of the album consists of two obligatory Swiss composers — Roland Moser and Helena Winkelman, the latter intriguing — and a wicked passacaglia by the Hungarian Gyorgy Ligeti. Between each piece there’s a meditative monody by Orlando di Lasso. On paper, it’s unsellable — yet it works.
Sini Simonen is a Finnish violinist who teaches at London’s Royal Academy of Music. Alexandre Foster is French-Canadian, professor of cello in Basle. Serious people who play as if this is their one shot at glory. They have turned my bleak week into an hour of hope and stories. This is what five stars are made for.
