Musical promenades at the Museums VIII – Music for violin and cello

The combination of violin with cello in chamber music isn’t the most usual. But it’s not unusual either. Even though most composers ignored this combination, some of them not only were involved in it, they even gave prominence, through masterpieces, to the multiple capabilities and timbres of these two string instruments. Through a connection of central Europe’s tradition with Kodaly’s western writing, Martinu’s lyric melodies which defy gravity, Skalkottas’s particularly personal and groundbreaking style and the incomparable beauty of Ravel’s French temperament, these four composers make us travel in the most difficult period of the 20th century, before and after the two world wars, and remind us that Art not only survives, but flourishes even during the hardest times.