In late 2015, Patricia Kopatchinskaja gathered duets from 1000 years of music history on her album «Take Two». The pieces of music on this album – including the majority of compositions for this live concert – range from the oldest chants in two voices from the Winchester Tropar by Guillaume de Machaut to the virtuoso piece Das kleine Irgendwas (The Little Something) by Heinz Holliger. By running through the centuries to such a tremendous extent, Patricia Kopatchinskaja expands our horizons for a greater understanding of classical music and breaks with our expectations of the technical possibilities of the violin.

Music partners Dreyfus & Romaniuk come into play

As one of the icons of the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, Patricia Kopatchinskaja has impressively demonstrated in her numerous performances in recent years that she succeeds in every piece of the programme, no matter how impossible it may seem – and even more important: The offspring of a Moldavian family of musicians chooses older as well as new and extremely innovative pieces that become a real listening experience in their coexistence. Patricia Kopatchinskaja proves her versatility again and again with various music partners, in this live performance with the British viol player Laurence Dreyfus as well as the Australian harpsichord player Anthony Romaniuk – they mostly appear as a duo, but there are a few surprises with pieces for the three of them…

Heartening pictures set to music

The extreme span of musical cornerstones begins with one of the Rhythmic Etudes by Bohuslav Martinů, which is supposed to be played jazzy; with its folkloristic gesture, the etude creates a most expressive, energetic opening –  even more exciting: Anthony Romaniuk takes over the actual piano part on the harpsichord. The small characteristic piece Das kleine Irgendwas by Heinz Holliger (which premiered in 2014) also occupies a unique position within the programme. Written for soprano and violin (or rather, for singing and reciting violin), the piece is based on a humorous-surrealistic story by the daughter of Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Heinz Holliger has masterly set the story to music – to a piece, that is highly complex: The simultaneous handling of playing, singing and reciting, coupled with «new» violin techniques, certainly is not easy.

With unbelievable precision and great enthusiasm, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Anthony Romaniuk and Laurence Dreyfus constantly forge a bridge from Medieval music to contemporary pieces – they very clearly prove that cleverly juxtaposed duets and trios suddenly turn 1000 years of music history into a real experience.