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, Ok. 423, and Duo in B-flat main for Violin and Viola, Ok. 424. Cosbey performs the violin, and Bandy each violin and viola on 18th century German-made devices.
Together with the Duos, they carry out choices from Mozart’s late opera La clemenza di Tito, Ok 621, organized for 2 violins by Johann Christian Stumpf (1740 – 1800). The operatic excerpts embody: 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, Ok. 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 method 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 few 12 months 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 recognized 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 averted recording any Mozart,” he says. His analysis and his performing life don’t usually 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 instructional paper.”
The objective is to current a efficiency of Mozart that’s “provocatively totally different”, which might be a direct results of that analysis. “I do need to folks to assume 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 have been the 2 duos,” she says. “Mozart was the proper 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 house. It felt like a very good place for us,” she provides.
The music speaks for itself, however discerning listeners will discover the distinction in method. “We do need it to be observed as totally different,” Catherine provides. Some folks reject the thought of deeply researching the music over the priority that the load of all the information 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 have 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 happy with what they discovered, in order that they stored wanting. What they largely encountered have been preparations that supplied one melodic half, and one accompaniment half. They have been trying to find a extra collaborative method.
The distinction is Stumpf. “They have been performed by a very good composer,” Dorian says. “This isn’t one thing you’ll be able to take as a right.”
“It’s always backwards and forwards,” says Cosbey. The elements additionally clearly mimic their unique instrumentation. “One in every of us might be a clarinet,” she laughs. “It brings out the conversational aspect of music.”
Final spring, they have been on the hunt for added 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 revealed, the rating itself would function the introduction to his music. It was designed to be performed at house as leisure for household and pals.
The recording affords a pay attention 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 house, they have been doubtless additionally speaking, or surrounded by household who could or could not have behaved as a rapt viewers in a live performance corridor. It’s fascinating to think about 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 elaborations and cadenzas to the efficiency. The character of the ornamentation and the way it was used was a vital a part of Bandy’s analysis. As we speak, ornamentation of that kind is usually utilized in music for piano or woodwind, not often for strings.
“However that is what Mozart, absolutely, would have performed,” Dorian says. Whereas it stands out from right this moment’s efficiency observe, he calls his method 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 skill to put in writing 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. “Individuals 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 will do with it.”
- Yow will discover 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.