Four Classical Duos for Viola and Cello

For the past two centuries or so, making music has largely been a public business, with paying audiences listening to professional musicians. But for most of western history, outside of formal and religious occasions and local festivities, music-making was largely a domestic affair, with individuals playing for their own pleasure. Most of the music written for the drawing room has long been lost from sight, and its composers forgotten, the two heard here – the Austrian Cajetan Wutky and German-English John Henry (né Justus Heinrich) Griesbach – being cases in point. Their Haydnesque string duos, only recently rescued from obscurity in modern publications, hint at the pleasure their first patrons would have found in performing them.

Jenny Joelson, viola
Luzi Dubs, cello