Dorian Komanoff Bandy and Catherine Cosbey just lately launched their album Mozart: String Duos on the Leaf Music label. The recording consists of preparations of two violin duets which have by no means been recorded earlier than.
On the discharge, the duo carry out the composer’s Duo in G Main for Violin and Viola, Okay. 423, and Duo in B-flat main for Violin and Viola, Okay. 424. Cosbey performs the violin, and Bandy each violin and viola on 18th century German-made devices.
Together with the Duos, they carry out alternatives from Mozart’s late opera La clemenza di Tito, Okay 621, organized for 2 violins by Johann Christian Stumpf (1740 – 1800). The operatic excerpts embrace: I. Come ti piace imponi 8 II. Deh se piacer mi vuoi 9 III. Deh prendi un dolce amplesso 10 VII. Parto, ma tu ben mio 11 VIII. Ah grazie si rendano.
The Violin Sonata in A Main, Okay. 305 is the second newly recorded association. The nameless association, created in Paris in 1799, turns the Sonata into a bit for 2 violins.
We spoke to Dorian Komanoff Bandy and Catherine Cosbey concerning the recording and their strategy to the music. Each musicians are additionally educators. Cosbey serves on the violin and chamber music college of McGill College’s Schulich College of Music. Musicologist and performer Dorian Bandy is an Affiliate Professor within the Music Analysis and Music Efficiency division, with a specialty in Early Music and Music Historical past.
Dorian Komanoff Bandy and Catherine Cosbey: The Interview
Dorian Komanoff Bandy is a number one skilled on Mozart, making the composer because the pure focus for the album. “I’ve simply written a ebook on Mozart and it got here out a couple of yr in the past,” Dorian explains.
The ebook, titled Mozart the Performer, Variations on the Showman’s Artwork, zeroes in to the composer as he was equally or maybe even higher identified in his day — as a virtuoso performer. It’s the end result of a longstanding curiosity within the composer and his work.
“For a very long time, I’ve prevented recording any Mozart,” he says. His analysis and his performing life don’t typically coincide so neatly, however he says the idea had been on his thoughts for some very long time.
“Really for me, all of it is form of to listen to the analysis in a means. However I don’t need it to sound like an educational paper.”
The aim is to current a efficiency of Mozart that’s “provocatively totally different”, which shall be a direct results of that analysis. “I do wish to folks to suppose wow — I’ve by no means heard Mozart performed like that,” he says.
Catherine feedback that performing Mozart with Dorian once they first met was how she knew he was a musical kindred spirit. “One of many first issues we performed had been the 2 duos,” she says. “Mozart was the right assembly place.” Catherine’s background consists of intensive work with string quartets, together with the Cavani String Quartet (since 2019), and beforehand the Cecilia and Linden String Quartets.
“With Dorian’s analysis was this acquainted dwelling. It felt like a superb place for us,” she provides.
The music speaks for itself, however discerning listeners will discover the distinction in strategy. “We do need it to be observed as totally different,” Catherine provides. Some folks reject the concept of deeply researching the music over the priority that the load of all the info will overshadow interpretation. Diving into the music, although, is about simply the other.
“The analysis is about discovering extra life within the music,” she says. “We hope the viewers and listeners are dazzled by it.”
New Preparations For Previous Music
How is it doable to report a brand new model of Mozart in 2025? Dorian says the pair had been already looking out for preparations of the opera, and located the work of Johann Christian Stumpf. The German composer has left works of his personal, in addition to chamber preparations of the operas of Mozart, Salieri, and others.
As Dorian notes, there are a number of present preparations and reference recordings of Mozart carried out by duos. However, he and Catherine weren’t glad with what they discovered, so that they saved trying. What they largely encountered had been preparations that supplied one melodic half, and one accompaniment half. They had been trying to find a extra collaborative strategy.
The distinction is Stumpf. “They had been carried out by a superb composer,” Dorian says. “This isn’t one thing you’ll be able to take with no consideration.”
“It’s consistently backwards and forwards,” says Cosbey. The elements additionally clearly mimic their unique instrumentation. “Certainly one of us shall be a clarinet,” she laughs. “It brings out the conversational component of music.”
Final spring, they had been on the hunt for extra materials to finish a full album. As luck would have it, Dorian went to a convention the place a pal and fellow researcher introduced the invention of the brand new preparations of the sonatas. “She gave us all eight duos,” he says.
Home Music-Making
When Mozart wrote the music, and it was initially printed, the rating itself would function the introduction to his music. It was designed to be performed at dwelling as leisure for household and mates.
The recording gives a hear at how the music was initially performed and skilled.
“That was one other inspiration for the album,” says Catherine. “It’s a means of taking in Mozart as folks would have [back then].”
As she factors out, when folks purchased the music within the 1700s and performed it at dwelling, they had been probably additionally speaking, or surrounded by household who might or might not have behaved as a rapt viewers in a live performance corridor. It’s fascinating to contemplate what it means for the music.
“It’s a cool factor,” she says.
Together with unearthing the brand new preparations, Cosbey and Bandy have created an area for improvisation within the piece by including elaborate gildings and cadenzas to the efficiency. The character of the ornamentation and the way it was used was an important a part of Bandy’s analysis. At the moment, ornamentation of that sort is usually utilized in music for piano or woodwind, hardly ever for strings.
“However that is what Mozart, absolutely, would have carried out,” Dorian says. Whereas it stands out from right this moment’s efficiency apply, he calls his strategy to improvisation fairly conservative. “It’s very totally different than with keyboard music,” he says, referring it a playful problem to drag off as a duo.
“It’s not simply the ornamentation.” Dorian notes that, in his ebook, he calls Mozart primarily a ventriloquist for his capacity to jot down one thing like a horn name right into a viola half. “It’s not simply the arias which are operatic.”
He says that he needs to current a extra correct, and multi-layered, understanding of Mozart and his music. “Folks need Mozart to be lovely and sleek, and so they downplay the drama,” he says, “the messiness of what he does.”
It’s a name to different musicians to experiment extra with the treasured music. “To search out out what they’ll do with it.”
- You’ll find out extra about Mozart: String Duos [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
