Violinist Renaud Capuçon and cellist Gautier Capuçon, both phenomenally talented performers, combine their distinct artistic personalities in these truly scintillating renditions of duos for violin and cello. If Renaud's brilliance is somewhat distant and reserved, Gautier's tone, even when he's busy displaying his mind-boggling virtuosity, strikes the listener as a wonder in itself, an experience of pure sonic bliss. Johan Halvorsen's Passacaille after Handel, a veritable catalog of problems and obstacles for string ...
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Violinist Renaud Capuçon and cellist Gautier Capuçon, both phenomenally talented performers, combine their distinct artistic personalities in these truly scintillating renditions of duos for violin and cello. If Renaud's brilliance is somewhat distant and reserved, Gautier's tone, even when he's busy displaying his mind-boggling virtuosity, strikes the listener as a wonder in itself, an experience of pure sonic bliss. Johan Halvorsen's Passacaille after Handel, a veritable catalog of problems and obstacles for string players, may not be great music but one finds great pleasure in the magical, almost symbiotic blending of two sonorities, the performance becoming more interesting than the music itself. Far more demanding, as works of art, are the Duos by Kodály and Schulhoff. These are works of extraordinary intellectual and emotional complexity, reflecting the composers' efforts to create meaningful and relevant music in a century (the twentieth) of chaos and destruction. Renaud and Gautier convincingly...
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