Duo Gelland: Antonio Vivaldi: Suonate a 2 violini, da camera, da suonarsi anche senza il basso

What accounts for the persistent popularity of Vivaldi’s music after all these centuries? Cecilia and Martin Gelland, together known as Duo Gelland, capture one important reason on their new recording of four of the composer’s sonatas for two violins. Vivaldi, a master violinist himself, infused his compositions for the instrument with the expressiveness of the human voice. In the hands of fine interpreters like the Gellands, works like these sonatas ring with an authenticity almost biological.

Not About the Bass

The effect may be most pronounced in Vivaldi’s music for two unaccompanied violins. These sonatas contain reworked material from his previous compositions (as was often done at the time, cf. J.S. Bach) such as concertos for two violins and even arias from his operas. But without orchestral accompaniment, or even the need for a continuo to provide the roots of the harmonics (the sonatas are marked “da suonarsi anche senza il basso” – “can also be played without a bass”), the music has a pure, conversational quality. It’s a naked kind of communication, you could say, between two individuals – and between musicians and listeners.

The Gellands recorded these sessions in a church in Sweden, and the results resound with the reverberations of open space. I have mixed feelings about this kind of recorded sound.

On the one hand it suggests you’re hearing the music in a live, “real” space as opposed to via closed-circuit capture in a recording studio. Motivic gestures in the tragic slow movement of RV 77, for example, drift and fade in a very natural-sounding way.

On the other hand, it can also smack of “effects,” probably because we’re so used to artificial reverb in popular music.

My preference in this case is to listen through good (and relatively large) speakers, where the effect of the reverb is somewhat dampened or assimilated by your own real space, rather than through earbuds, which create a closed, dissociated world for the ears. But your mileage may vary. It’s a rewarding and inspiring listen either way.

Vivaldi, per Duo Gelland

The opening Allegro of RV 71 launches the album joyfully with a scatter of playfulness and virtuosity. Throughout, the Gellands’ performances of these scores produce marvelous and manifold effects. Striking, for example, are the four-part harmonies achieved through combined double stops in the beautiful slow movement of RV 70, where gentle flutterings contrast with the rich chords. The boisterous dance of the same sonata’s “Allegro molto” finale hits home too. (These sonatas have but three movements each.)

Vivaldi’s clever insertion of individual “bass” notes, as in, for example, the Larghetto of RV 71, makes harmonic movement clear, giving the two voices the freedom to imitate each others’ melodies and motifs, trade licks, harmonize, argue and agree.

Swirling uplift transforms into minor-chord angst in the first movement of RV 77. Echo smooths the scurrying, near-panicky phrasemaking of RV 68’s opening movement, to eerie effect. But the delicacy of the playing ensures an intoxicating clarity. RV 68’s tiny Andante is composed of simple scales and motives and lacy arpeggios – ur-Vivaldi? – while the third movement has ethereal passages where ornamentation seems to have slipped loose of its bounds to melody. These clouds of sound encapsulate the almost-mystical togetherness that the Gellands achieve on this bold and fragrant album.

Did Vivaldi play or hear this music the way it sounds here? It would be fascinating to know what he would have thought of these interpretations. Would he appreciate the breathy eddies that the Gellands spin from the rave-up at the end of the third movement of RV 71? How did he and his contemporaries think about and account for echo and reverb when they composed music they knew would be performed in a high-ceilinged church?

When I hear chamber music in a church, it takes just a few minutes for my brain to adapt and assimilate the echo so that I can enjoy the music as much as I would in an acoustically designed concert hall. I find something similar happens with a recording. And I do feel like I’m in the room with Duo Gelland when I listen to their renditions, at once spacious and intense, of this wonderful music.

— Jon Sobel, 11.03.2025

Every so often a CD comes along that illuminates a corner of the repertoire completely unfamiliar to me. I knew of Vivaldi’s sonatas for two violins and continuo (his very first published work, Opus 1, is for this combination), but I was unaware of anything for two violins senza basso continuo. Turns out these are reworkings of other works by the composer, chiefly concertos for two violins and orchestra. It is conjectured that Vivaldi wrote RV 68, 71, and 77 for himself and his father Giovanni Battista, also a fine violinist, for use during a 1730 concert tour through central Europe. On the other hand, RV 70 is an arrangement of an aria from the opera Bajazet (1735). It is likely that Vivaldi also used these pieces for pedagogical purposes during his long tenure at the Ospidale della Pietà, where he spent much of his adult life.

Duo Gelland consists of Swedish violinists Cecilia and Martin, who are husband and wife. Their CDs have been reviewed favorably several times in Fanfare, most recently by Robert Carl in 36:2. Although they have done much original research into 17th- and 18th-century music for two violins, they are not Baroque violinists per se. In fact, the bulk of Duo Gelland’s recorded output deals with post-1800 repertoire, with a concentration on contemporary music.

Auditioning this CD caused me to ponder the present state of period-instrument performance, especially as it impacts a composer whose music is so utterly familiar that it borders on a cliché for some. It makes me wonder if the period-instrument world really understands the music of Vivaldi at all. Duo Gelland certainly do; they have succeeded in producing a recording that would be the envy, I think, of many Vivaldi specialists. The playing is inventive, imaginative, even daring at times. They communicate the music in a way that escapes many better-known (one might say, more marketable) performers. This, no less, through the difficult medium of a CD. How do they accomplish this? By employing any number of “tricks” in the Baroque playbook, including flexible tempos, gesture-based phrasing, ornamentation, and sudden, surprising contrasts in dynamics. The playing might seem overstated or meddlesome to some, but to me it is refreshing.

It all started with Stravinsky. Turns out he didn’t say that Vivaldi wrote “the same concerto 500 times”—that was Luigi Dallapiccola. Stravinsky did push the idea, however, that Vivaldi was guilty of “mindless repetition,” especially when compared to J. S. Bach, whose music is so completely written out that it’s beyond reproach. These were the attitudes of Modernism as developed in the 1920s, and Stravinsky was its Poster Boy. Modernism rejected the excesses of Romanticism, declaring that the composer’s score was sacrosanct and that the performer was enjoined with following it exactly, neither adding nor deleting a jot. Come scritto.

In the process, the performer became a second-class citizen, at least as far as Stravinsky was concerned. Of course, this is the polar opposite of the 18th century, where the performer was as important as the composer, in some cases more important. The notes in the score only told half of the story; sort of like Schrödinger’s cat, the piece was not fully realized until the performer had added his input, which drew upon the entire performance vocabulary of the time.

They might not realize it, but period instrumentalists are still burdened with the curse of Stravinsky. Many are afraid of putting too much of a personal stamp on the music, for fear of diluting the composer’s intent or being accused of tampering with the score. The result is a surfeit of note-perfect performances and recordings that fail to communicate or inspire. Bruce Haynes, in his book The End of Early Music (2004), characterized this kind of period performance as having “chops but no soul.”

The members of Duo Gelland understand all of this. They employ every expressive resource of the period at their disposal to bring this music to life. In addition to the ones outlined above, I should mention varied articulation, informed use of tempo rubato, and observance of beat hierarchy and agogic accent. Rather than being a dry lesson in musicology, however, this is an exciting, engrossing 45 minutes of music-making recorded in a wonderfully resonant acoustic. It deserves a wider audience. Highly recommended.

— Christopher Brodersen, 3.01.2026

It may come as no surprise to most that Antonio Vivaldi was one of the most famous and proficient violinists of his time. To be sure, his technical demands in his concertos are legendary (as is his inexhaustible fantasy in dramatic description), but often his own playing is overlooked in favor of his music. In rectifying this omission, the Duo Gelland, consisting of the couple Cecilia and Martin Gelland, have produced a set of four sonatas for two violins by Antonio Vivaldi that may well have been some of his last compositions. Musicologist Michael Talbot is cited in the rather descriptive booklet notes as suggesting that they may have been composed around 1730 for a tour of Central Europe by Vivaldi and his father, but then states that, because the elder Vivaldi had largely ceased performing around the time these appear to have been written after 1735 as an alternative for a couple of talented young women at the Ospedale in Venice, where Vivaldi was employed though often absent. As they were published posthumously, the matter remains open-ended. After hearing them, however, I find that their more modern style, with elements of the galant clearly in focus not only in the three-movement format, but also in terms of compositional technique, not to mention the paraphrases or reuse of material from operas from the middle 1730s, points to a much later date. During this time, Vivaldi had largely left Venice to go on tour or seek further employment in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, where he stayed for lengthy periods of time in both Dresden and Prague, as well as Vienna. (One should also note that this was largely unsuccessful, for he died in Vienna in 1741 in extreme poverty.) If one may speculate, Vivaldi was friends in Dresden with virtuoso violinist Johann Pisendel, for whom he had composed concertos in the 1710s, and so it is not beyond the realm of possibility to suggest that, given the progressive music in these duos in a style that was in vogue in Dresden at the time, he may have intended them as a showcase for himself and Pisendel.

No matter. These are fine works, intricate and filled with both Vivaldi’s well-known violinistic fireworks and a sense of good solid compositional structure. The disc opens with the G-Major Sonata, with a flurry of flashy sequences that seem almost like a nod to the Four Seasons. One hears, for example, the sudden appearance of twittering birds. The slow movement opens with a majestic tread, likewise a paean to Summer, with momentary scurrying of scalar patterns, and the finale is technically challenging with almost manic energy in the running up and down the register, only to conclude with a lighter cadential section. The first F-Major Duo (RV 70) is quite operatic, like a paraphrase of an Italian sinfonia with the gripping opening chords (refreshed by swirling fioritura and a sudden insertion of minor and some bit of tremolo). The Largo is slow and mysterious with a plucked second violin accompaniment and a languid theme with copious ornamentation. I find the finale a bit on the pesante side, with a hint of drone and running figuration that is highly complex and rapid. The B♭-Major Duo meanders a bit, consisting of fragmentary motivic excursions and the usual flourishes. The slow movement is a pensive lamento, while the finale sounds very much like an Austrian song with embellishments. The same manic energy infects the second F-Major Duo (RV 68) with its insistent violinistic coloratura. The Andante is another powerfully lyrical opera aria paraphrase, while the finale sparkles with a light dance rhythm and high register hijinks.

To say that the music is fun and brilliant is to gild the lily. It rushes about with technical demands worthy of any concerto, and here Vivaldi shows his skill at making both violins equal partners, even as a de facto foundational bass line emerges from time to time. The duo partners are equal matches both for this music and for each other. Indeed, it is said in the notes that they alternated the parts, but there is really no notion of first or second in terms of status of the parts and it is virtually impossible to tell who is playing which part. They are equally fiendishly difficult and yet so light and cheerful that one is mesmerized. The playing is crystal clear, with good phrasing and a fine sense of interpretation. This is an absolute must for any Vivaldi fancier, but it is unique enough stylistically, containing both old and newly emerging styles, that one will be sad to see it end. My recommendation: get it!

— Bertil van Boer, 3.01.2026

Sometimes, a program note can make one re-evaluate a composer, and few need more re-evaluation than Antonio Vivaldi. He’s certainly doing OK, what with all that Four Seasons stuff; but the first re-evaluation, for this reviewer, came in the form of acquaintance with Vivaldi’s operas, now a perennial source of joy and stimulation. A catalyst for many, I would suggest, would be Gianluigi Mattietti’s superb notes for this release (well translated by Cecilia Gelland). Mattietti suggests that Vivaldi was no mere willy-nilly re-user of his own musical material, but that his recontextualization from a core repository of ideas was a never-ending but carefully considered strategy. (Strangely, Rebecca Saunders outlined a similar methodology, with very different results, obviously, to me when I interviewed her a while ago around her Piano Concerto.)

So it is that the material for the Sonata for Two Violins (there is optional basso continuo, not heard here) can be also found in the Concerto for Two Violins, RV 516. Such was Mattietti’s conviction and enthusiasm, I high-tailed it over to a performance of RV 516: Issac Stern and, with the second violin part taken on flute, Jean-Pierre Rampal (Fanz Liszt CO/Rolla). It is fascinating to listen in this light, with the fuller textures of the orchestral incarnation. Heard on two violins here in the resonant acoustic of the Church of Laxejö, Sweden, the effect is remarkable: the same or similar material, disembodied, ghostly and yet just as true to Vivaldi’s genius. Duo Gelland is indeed a proper duo of equals; and how modern some of this writing sounds. This is definitely modeled on a concerto, swerving the chamber four-movement format for the concerto’s three. The expressive world of the Larghetto is unforgettable, a true dialogue in which Vivaldi seems to wish to break Baroque music’s restraining bonds. The music remains recognizably at least parallel, sometimes identical; and yet we are in a different, more ethereal world with the violins alone. Cecilia and Martin Gellard play with deep understanding of Vivaldi; some might find the church acoustic over-reverberant, but somehow to my ears it just adds to the eyebrow-raising nature of this music. Perhaps try to sample, if you can.

I mentioned Vivaldi opera earlier; apt, then, that the opening theme of RV 71 comes from an aria from Bajazet, “Del destin non dee lagnarsi” (sung by Bajazet)—an opera revived at Covent Garden’s Linbury Theatre relatively recently, the aria itself culled from an earlier Vivaldi opera, L’Olimpiade (an opera which was, curiously, also revived at the same venue recently). The descending scalic gesture is heard at maximum speed here in the two-violin version, though, arguably, more a Presto than an Allegro. Notice how Duo Gelland manages to maintain clarity: each note is heard, in spite of both velocity and acoustic.

A violin concerto by the nickname of L’amoroso, RV 271 feeds RV 70; small wonder, as the original is itself so threadbare (try Rachel Podger’s recording with Brecon Baoque). There is true artistry to Duo Gelland here. The stops of the central section make for perfect textural contrast: when the music is condensed down to two violins, such changes make for huge impact. The finale is just as remarkable: scamperings (again, a miracle, but every note is there) offer high virtuosity from both players, and the result is tremendously exciting for it.

Cast in B♭-Major, RV 77 is closely related to the Concerto for Two Violins, RV 505, but takes the music to very different spaces. Especially interesting is the way the secondo accents the second eighth note to provide momentum here, and how Vivaldi creates the idea of solo and ripieno so effectively with only two instruments at his disposal. It is the sheer delicacy of the central Andante that is most impressive here, though, as is Vivaldi’s process of interplay between the two violins; this is the most beautiful co-spinning of a line, perfectly judged by the Gellands, the restrained joy of the finale the perfect complement. The negotiation of rapid roulades is remarkable.

Finally, RV 68 in F Major balances the G Major of RV 71 (the first sonata heard) in brightness, leaving the interior RV 70 and 77 for the more experimental, perhaps, pieces. Certainly, the first movement of RV 68 holds much light. There is a shadowed sense of the gallant about the central Andante, which in 2:27 creates brave new worlds, a feeling prolonged via the positively skyborne passages of the finale.

Duo Gelland plays superbly throughout, vibrato-free so that dissonances can really “speak.” This is an invitation to see Vivaldi from a different angle; the rewards are many and varied.

— Colin Clarke, 3.01.2026

Antonio Vivaldi; Quattro sonate per due violini features the Duo Gelland (violinists Cecilia and Martin Gelland). They perform a quartet of sonatas published after the Italian Baroque composer’s death. The sonatas are scored for two violins and an optional basso continuo (they are collectively described: “Suonate a 2 violini, da camera, ad suonarsi anche senza il basso”). On this New Focus release, the Duo Gelland plays without the continuo part. Each of the sonatas is in three movements, in fast–slow–fast order. The Duo Gelland artists alternate the roles of first and second violin (the CD materials do not specify the specific division of parts). The members of Duo Gelland play a 1750 Giovanni Battista Gabrieli and a 1703 Giovanni Battista Rogeri, “in modern setup on gut strings and with Baroque bows by Walter Mettal.” The artists pursue an HIP approach, with a lean, transparent sonority that avoids vibrato, fleet tempos in the outer movements, and ornamentation.

The Duo Gelland performs these works in brilliant fashion, with razor-sharp articulation and a profound, constant sense of interaction. As Gianluigi Mattietti describes in his excellent liner notes: “These four sonatas treat the two violins as equals, with a continuous interchange of the same material, in playful chiasmus, where the order of musical cells in reversed, as well as in imitative counterpoint and in passage work where the violins move (in parallel fashion).” Rather than envision the two violin parts as precise echoes of the other, Cecilia and Martin Gelland seek to explore each voice’s individuality. Martin Gelland refers to an oft-quoted recollection by the German architect Johann Friedrich Armand von Uffenbach of Vivaldi’s playing “a fantasia that quite astounded me, since no one can ever have played like that, nor ever will, his fingers just a straw’s breadth from the bridge…” Gelland also cites Louis Spohr’s complaint that when he visited Rome in 1816, each orchestral musician felt free to play his own ornamentation, “although I told them repeatedly only to play the notes in their parts…” In their performances of the Vivaldi Trio Sonatas, Cecilia and Martin Gelland explore individual ornamentation, especially in the slow-tempo movements. Each member of the Duo Gelland likewise adopts differing approaches to dynamics, color, and articulation. The thrilling execution, coupled with the atmosphere of individuality and experimentation, evoke Uffenbach’s description of Vivaldi’s own playing.

The recording, made in the Church of Laxsjö, Jämtland, Sweden, places the musicians in close proximity to the listener, within the context of a spacious, resonant acoustic. A most pleasing and exhilarating recital. Enthusiastically recommended.

— Ken Meltzer, 3.01.2026

These four charming duets for two violins RV 68, 70, 71 and 78 differ from Vivaldi’s opus 1 set of duos for two violins in that these are ‘senza il basso’. Published after the composer’s death, they possibly date from the 1730s when Vivaldi toured central Europe with his father – certainly the option of performing without continuo accompaniment would lend itself to the unpredictable conditions of international touring. On the other hand, the mature style of the writing and the technical demands suggest that they were probably composed later for Vivaldi to play with one of the talented violin soloists of the Ospedale della Pietà.

The Duo Gelland, a married couple of violin virtuosi, take a wonderfully fresh and spontaneous approach to this music, living up to the group’s ethos ‘never to perform anything exactly the same way twice.’ In this way, the duets they play are treated as ‘live’ dialogues between the two players, and any performance, including this recording, is just one of many options. An element they don’t mention in their notes (perhaps understandably) is the strongly competitive element of these accounts! Whatever the circumstances, these duets could hardly hope for a more vivacious and electrifying performance than this short but charming recording.

— D. James Ross, 3.01.2026

A Modern Renaissance Duo: A Conversation with Martin and Cecilia Gelland

To begin with, would you please outline your backgrounds that led to your forming the Duo Gelland?

Martin Gelland: As a teen I also played the piano a lot. I really enjoyed forming the individual parts for each hand. As a violinist I particularly enjoyed the small constellations where each person contributes actively to the concept of the whole and the details, the story you could say. One of my teachers, Max Rostal, encouraged me to become a professional chamber music player. My first CD was in a duo with piano. For that CD with a number of first recordings, I also received a new solo work dedicated to me by the composer Dieter Acker. I found it incredibly rewarding to bring life to a new work, but also to make forgotten works come alive or works which weren’t even published. So, when Cecilia and I met I started looking for violin duos and discovered that the repertoire was much richer and more challenging and interesting than I could ever have expected. It opened up a new world.

Cecilia Gelland: I knew from before I started at the Royal Academy of Music at the University of Stockholm as a teen that I wanted to play chamber music. In Cincinnati at CCM my main teacher for the first three years was Walter Levin, the primarius of the LaSalle Quartet. All five years I had chamber music with each of the members of the LaSalle Quartet. I truly loved and respected them, and I thought I wanted to play in a professional string quartet. When Martin and I had met at a stand in Copenhagen in the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra—neither one of us was actually supposed to be there—we slowly started exploring violin duo while sort of waiting for the other two members of the quartet. But somehow, they never showed up and once we had started with the Allan Pettersson project for BIS, or perhaps once we were done, we didn’t want to play anything else than violin duo. The potential of the violin duo constellation had revealed itself and we only wanted to continue more and more. We had become violin duo nerds. When you play violin duo, each violin becomes its own orchestra of colors with subtle variations and differentiations of phrasing, articulation, colors of course, personality, language. The listener can take in a very extreme counterpoint when there are only two instruments. Being just two opens up for “radical dialogue” where you can also play around with being more or less lined up, like when pianists play Chopin and the two hands have quite a bit of rhythmical freedom in relation to each other, an art that can be studied in old Welte Mignon recordings. That is something that truly fascinates us as a means of expression while working with how our violin voices merge and stand out in relief against each other in endless ways. “Every sound or articulation I can do, Martin can do too, since we both play the violin,” and yet the charm of it is how we are not the same at all, how we keep surprising each other, challenging each other, widening the palette of possibilities. There are usually tons of double-stops as well as counterpoint within each violin’s individual part; so many voices. Each violin part always has something important to say as a voice or lots of voices. It is our job to imbue them with life. We felt, and still feel, this strong passion for all that you can do and create in a violin duo.

Your website states that you have “turned an 18th century concept into the driving force of contemporary exploration.” Would you please elaborate on this idea (particularly since you recorded the very 18th century Vivaldi duos).

About 300 new works have been composed for us by composers from different continents. Some of the compositions are very experimental both as far as the aural and visual experience is concerned and also regarding the conceptual form and the creative process. We were invited to take a very active part in a number of processes.

Ole Lützow-Holm opened his highly complex score for solo violin, Da Sotto Terra, asking us to turn it into a duo, but not necessarily as a written score and not preferably in a one-to-one transcription, but rather as a starting point, a well, a filter. We returned to the material for three different projects: 1) a multimedia “violin dance” choreographed by Norwegian Jon Tombre, that had us playing and moving across the stage. At one point Martin was on his back like a bug playing and pushing himself around so he was sweeping very quickly along the floor while I was playing, coming down from on a chair under a veil. 2) We performed three or four clocked improvisations of the score in between the RIAS choir’s performances of music by Johann Schein from the 30 Year’s War (1618–48) in the Berlin Philharmonic Chamber Music Hall. 3) We “sorted” the material and recorded it in layers with the idea of making it interactive for the listener to adjust levels, change the order of segments, etc.

In another crossover project we worked with Danish composer Birgitte Alsted and choreographer Britta Hanssen in the conception and performance of a “violin theater” with a text from the surrealistic novel A Donkey on Mars by Albanian author Kasem Trebeshina. He had said that art should never be an extension of political power. The punishment for saying that, in those authoritarian times, was 17 years in prison, more precisely in a psychiatric ward. Our work was a one-hour synthesis of music, motion, and text. No score was created. The process was a verbal one where our creative roles were equal. One of many beautiful moments in this tragic and provoking story was a kiss where we somehow kept speaking and playing and moving at the same time. The end of the performance can be seen and heard on YouTube.

Birgitte Alsted also wrote a double concerto, Nach Klänge hin, for us with EAM, that we performed with the Danish Chamber Orchestra. The cadenza was in part an improvisation that we “moved” into from our “classic” concerto-playing positions close to the orchestra. Birgitte asked me, two days before the premiere, what do you feel that you would like to be at that moment in the music. A tree, I said, and we found a way for me to turn into a “tree” while Martin instead wanted to run, so he did that before joining me until we returned to our previous positions. The entire concerto can be heard and seen on Vimeo.

Joey Crane created a duo, Scarlet Membrane, of mostly our hands touching the instruments in different ways without making sounds (also on YouTube).

Hespos wrote two very dramatic and emotionally charged duos for us with very unorthodox nonlinear scores.

Giorgio Netti’s wonderfully arched duo has us play with metal preparations between the strings and singing in quarter tones.

The stage director Etienne Glaser asked us to be musicians and actors in Niklas Rådström’s new version of Dante’s Divina Commedia, where we as the illicit lovers Paolo and Francesca in hell played on the same violin, Martin with his arms around me.

One particular high point is the Allan Pettersson 1952 duo violin cycle, a daunting, if magnificent set of works. Though it states that it launched your international careers, can you talk a bit about why you chose this and how the recording session came about with BIS?

Actually, it was not our choice. It was Robert von Bahr’s idea. We had suggested something else. He called and said that our suggestion wouldn’t fit into their plans. I was prepared to hang up when he said he wanted us to do Allan Pettersson instead. Kind of shocked, I said, but it has been recorded already. My teacher Josef Grünfarb had recorded it with another fine concertmaster whom we also knew from our home region in northern Sweden. Robert von Bahr just said, yes, but we can record it better now. I don’t know what in the world made him trust us like that. It is a hair-raisingly difficult work that takes an hour, with almost impossible double-stops and melodic shapes, but it is gorgeously wild, penetratingly expressive, colorful, ingeniously orchestrated for just two violins. While we were at it, Martin said, if we keep playing this over and over forever, I’ll go mad. It was obviously not meant literally, more a way of describing the enormous impact of the work; he loved Allan Pettersson as much as I did. To me it felt more like standing on a rocky isle in the archipelago in hard wind and rain. I liked it, you feel that you are alive. The reception was so enthusiastic and came from so many parts of the world, that it put us on the map. Many composers were inspired to compose violin duos for us after that.

Before moving on, you have piqued my curiosity in your last comment. What was it that you first proposed to Robert von Bahr, and have you an idea why it wouldn’t fit his “plans” before substituting the Pettersson?

I am sure that he had already decided on Allan Pettersson and that he for some reason had chosen us for that, so he must have listened to the things we sent him. Our suggestion was a collection of pieces by different composers and many record companies prefer mono composer editions or very clearly outlined themes. Our CD Swedish Miniatures on Nosag is a bit like what we suggested, only with even more pieces.

Your music education work is equally important and timely, especially in this rather sterile technical age. Would you please describe how you came about the idea (first in Strömsund and then elsewhere) and what sorts of fruits it has yielded in your career.

The first time in the classroom we didn’t understand how interested the children would be. We mistakenly thought we would have to coax them, fool them into listening with funny wigs and hats that we had borrowed. We never brought any props after that, just the violins. That was plenty. The children and young folks were so interested. They liked Bartók and Leclair, but they loved the contemporary art music at least as much. When we came to Strömsund, a geographically large northern mountainous municipal/county, they had 12,000 inhabitants. We became artists in residence, part time, meeting all the school kids. Here we had the opportunity to learn a lot from the children. Our common language for communicating about the music was obviously not the professional musician vocabulary. No, they described what they heard and experienced in the music with associations and stories from their own lives, some humorous, some sad, all of them very striking. We would also ask them to paint the music while we were playing, making a kind of portrait of the music. It seemed like it stretched their concentration span even longer without really diminishing their listening. We often let them respond to the music with a new music of their own. They would tell us how it should start, the sounds, low or high, loud or soft, scary, calm, fast, what should happen then and after that, what Cecilia’s violin should play, what Martin’s violin should play. We would ask, do you mean like this or more like that? Thus, a new music came about that we premiered in the classroom. This way we learnt a lot about improvisation. Sometimes the children had instruments and we could improvise together. It happened that they wrote poems to their portraits of the music and at times the new music would sort of come out of their poems or pictures. Often, we brought new music that we hadn’t even performed yet. It was interesting how their stories somehow moved into the music, inhabiting it and making it more vivid. Their enthusiasm and interest also strengthened our belief in the music, its ability and strength to become meaningful.

We had been asked to perform James Dillon’s 12-movement, highly complex and virtuosic yet fantasy-like duo Traumwerk. Right when we were entering the stage someone let us know that the composer was present, not something that really calms your nerves, but James Dillon was very happy with our interpretation and asked us to record it. I said, again, but it has been recorded. He thought it could be done more than once in more than one way. But, I said, it is not possible to record this work and feel that you did everything right, all the polyrhythms and the quarter notes in those tempos. And he said, why don’t you record it live! We did, but at first, we played it for the children, often two movements together where they could be compared, sometimes contrasted in interesting ways, sometimes turning into the same story. I remember once playing the first and the last movements. A girl explained that the first one was two parents being so sad when they were together, because they were fighting so badly and the last movement was the parents being so sad being apart because they missed each other so badly. There was a movement where the sound turned ponticello and that was “the frogs turning into rubber boots.” The children used the music to describe and grasp their own world, so it seemed, and at the same time they taught us a lot about the music. We recorded the music in a church next to a school. The composer and filmmaker Johan Ramström filmed. The children got permission from their parents to participate in the last movement. You could see them listening sitting in a circle around us. For each of the 12 movements you could see one of their hands placing the number of the movement on a church tablet board, actually the one where you hang the number of the next psalm. Traumwerk received the prestigious German Annual Record Critics’ Award. We obviously love working with children and young people and could talk about it forever. If you want any more stories, just let us know.

You have had numerous works dedicated to you by contemporary composers, and the list of premieres is indeed important in the repertory. Do you commission compositions or are they the result of your activity as duo violinists?

There are a lot of commissioned works, like the double concertos by Håkan Larsson (premiered in the Berlin Philharmonic Hall but with a young festival orchestra, commissioned by the now extinct Rikskonserter) and Jörgen Dafgård and Olov Franzén and many works with choir and a lot of duos. We also received many, many works as treasured gifts. Some of the really fine duos which we recorded were actually written by the composer while still an advanced student at university.

There is also an indication that you have entered wholeheartedly into the world of media crossover. Though you’ve already made some mention of it above, would you please elaborate a bit on this, including the breadth of your interactions with mixed media, and what sorts of projects are continuing?

Recently we collaborated in an unusual art-film project with the name Riflesso, which is Esperanto. In this project, Martin filmed, directed, and created most of the music. Cecilia also composed some of it. Cecilia spoke, acted, and sang and played a very out-of-tune but beautiful square piano. The poetic 25 minutes film is about exile, about the emptiness and bewilderedness of loss, pain, and grief, also through poetry by Adelbert von Chamisso.

I am particularly intrigued by your “open score” in Berlin, that allows for audience participation. How has that gone, and have there been any surprises in this innovative project?

I mention this project with the music of Ole Lützow-Holm above. The recording has been done and edited for a long time, but we are waiting to find the means or contexts for realizing the audience participation aspect.

Apart from these chamber works, do you perform elsewhere, either as members of smaller chamber groups or in larger ensembles?

Martin Gelland: We are not members of any other ensembles or orchestras. Occasional collaborations have taken place. Cecilia premiered a number of duos for viola and organ, for example. I sometimes play with concert organist Håkan Dahlén. The first summer, during the pandemic when I got stuck in Sweden, we played one of the Vivaldi/Bach organ works, one that originally was for two violins and orchestra, and Bach’s famous D-Minor Toccata. I played from the score and had colored the parts I wanted to play. The viola went so high for some time playing the first violin part, that people thought it was a violin, but sometimes I played the cello part and had to read bass clef. We also played a beautiful sonata for organ and violin, here done on the viola, by Isabella Leonarda. I have a Baroque bow for my viola too. But we also played Gösta Nyström and Debussy. A few summers later we received a beautiful transcription of a viola concerto by Gunnar Bucht, who was born in 1927 and still fit. I met him a few weeks ago, would love to premiere his concerto with an orchestra, but orchestras are not so interested in premiering works. The transcriber is also a composer, Jörgen Häll, and he had written a dramatic and lyrical new work for us as well. Peter Lyne had a piece that had originally been composed for viola and piano and he liked it with organ very much. Fredrik Högberg also had two pieces for us. Those composers all have a connection to the northern east coast of Sweden, even Gunnar Bucht, so that was a theme. We performed the program a number of times, also in the Svensk Musikvår, Stockholm.

I do have one more project, but this might not be the time or place to expand on that. It’s about the violino grande, a five-stringed gamba-shaped instrument envisioned by a Holocaust survivor, concert violinist Bronislaw Eichenholz, who came to Sweden. The Violino Grande was constructed by Hans Olof Hansson in the 1960s. There is an LP where Bronislaw Eichenholz plays. It is gorgeous. Penderecki wrote a concerto for it which Bronislaw performed in Sweden and in the US to high acclaim, but he got sick and had to quit playing altogether, so the instrument was forgotten. The wonderful violino grande concertos by Moses Pergament and Werner Wolf Glaser were never premiered. I love them and am currently borrowing a violino grande with a luscious sound from Bronislaw’s son Mika Eichenholz, who is a very fine conductor with an international career. I learned to play it and am planning some projects with organ, piano, and/or orchestra. More on YouTube.

One finds here also a focus upon the various concertizing violin duos (Maddalena Sirmen and her husband Lodovici first and foremost among those I know of). Do you plan to explore the repertory more fully on recordings?

We would love to record the Sirmens’ music. They were such an interesting couple, modern in many ways. Maddalena brought her favorite priest with her more or less into the marriage. Lodovici and Maddalena had a daughter together. They then separated, and Lodovici went back to his lover who according to the scarce sources is supposed to have been quite kind and supportive to their daughter. Later in life Maddalena and Lodovici joined for concerts in St. Petersburg. Maddalena’s duos have a second violin that seldom plays the melody, but her development sections, where the themes “discuss,” are very pronounced. In Lodovici’s duos the violins have similar roles but there aren’t really any development sections at all, no discussions. I’d love to record them. We would have the capacity to record more, but we do it in these acoustically ideal, quietly remote and available north Swedish churches, and they are only warm enough for a short period of time in the summer.

Turning to these Vivaldi duos for two violins, how did you come across them? I am familiar with a large number of his works for the instrument, mainly concertos, but these are little gems of whose existence I was unaware.

We spent a lot of time in archives, libraries, antiquarians, music stores, and online exploring the repertoire. We have a rather big library now. These duos became favorites early on and have followed us ever since. Guillemain is just a bit later. His duos are great, a bit chaotic in a very artistically rewarding way. Carlo Tessarini wrote lovely and spirited duos, that we played a lot. Joseph Haydn came later, but we found his duos for violin and viola before I played the viola in a version for two violins that is nice with more exchange of the material between the parts. Very early transcriptions of the Magic Flute for two violins are well made. There is also Pugnani and Mosel.

One of the interesting aspects of this recording is that you are so evenly matched in terms of technique and sound that it is virtually impossible to tell you apart. What made you decide to alternate parts in this recording?

We actually alternate parts rather often, e.g., in Oleg Gotskosik’s duo set From the Jewish Folk Tradition, and in Ture Rangström, both of which we have also recorded. We had played the Vivaldi duos for such a long time, one duo at a time. From the beginning we had chosen our parts in each duo. We let it be like that. It’s nice taking turns. It’s good for the imagination and for getting new ideas and new perspectives.

Michael Talbot, a noted Telemann musicologist, has postulated for whom these duos might have been written. We’ve discussed previously whether a possible other performer might have been the Dresden concertmaster, Johann Pisendel. Would you tell us your thoughts on the matter?

We like to think that Vivaldi had an open mind about who would play the duos, thinking about different persons and contexts. It seems very natural that he imagined them for traveling, making it possible to play them even if there weren’t any basso continuo musicians around. The basso is so cleverly incorporated in the violin parts, that the option, stated in the score, of playing them without basso seems totally natural. At the Ospedale omitting the basso continuo would not have been necessary, since they had a whole orchestra of musicians there. Even so, it seems natural that Vivaldi would have played them at the Ospedale or that two violinists there played them. It is of course also possible that the version with basso was the one version he left in there for the Ospedale, but that he personally enjoyed creating a version for just two violins, a fun challenge and experiment and a new vogue. Telemann wrote his duos for simply two violins or two flutes in 1727 and Leclair wrote his Op 3 in 1731–1732. Guillemain’s wonderful six duos for only two violins came out in 1739. We used to think, like Talbot, that these duos were composed for the tour that Antonio Vivaldi undertook with his father to Vienna and Prague in 1730. In that case they might have been meant for himself and his dad, with whom he had often performed throughout life. The Italian musicologist Gianluigi Mattietti, who wrote the interesting and in-depth text for the booklet, points out, that the melodic references in the duos to Vivaldi’s own music are from operas that weren’t yet conceived at that time. Composers often borrowed from themselves back then, recycling the music while developing it further or adjusting it to new contexts, new forms. However, it would be very atypical to borrow melodies from your chamber music to employ in your operas. The other way around, using opera melodies in your chamber music or other instrumental music was characteristic, and Vivaldi would tend to do it shortly after having finished an opera. Thus, the duos must have been composed later in the 1730s and by that time Antonio Vivaldi couldn’t have planned to play them with his father, who by then, as Gianluigi Mattietti explains, was much too weak and sickly. I like your idea that Antonio Vivaldi had in mind to play the duos on his last tour 1740 with Pisendel. Vivaldi had written works for Pisendel earlier. I imagine that they had performed together too. In 1740 Vivaldi didn’t make it further north than Vienna, where he died in 1741. Had he hoped to go to Dresden to see Pisendel or had he hoped that Pisendel would come and see him in Vienna?

Did you encounter any issues, either musical or technical, in recording (and performing) these duos?

These duos are technically as virtuosic as the concertos, and at the same time violinistic. Vivaldi knew how to play and what you can do. The Venetian visual art language of his time employs a vivid intensity of colors, motion, and gestures that seem all-compassing, also as a way of interacting within the paintings and with the audience. To us that visual expression seems to embody Vivaldi’s concept of musical expression and communication. We chose to play his duos with our baroque bows on gut strings, which are quite sensitive to humidity and temperature. We recorded in the picturesque Church of Laxsjö in northern Sweden. Finding the sweet spot in a room always takes a while. We love subtle differentiation of colors, gestures, articulations, etc., so we generally prefer to record in as perfect a place as possible with two or four microphones. That retains the largest range of possible differentiation of the tone. Recording in such a place is fun. You listen with the ears of the microphones and see what you can do, how you can challenge those acoustics to make shades of colors, articulations, expressions that you wouldn’t even be able to do anywhere else. Impossible visions are often much more fun and stimulating than easy ones.

How do you think these compare with Vivaldi’s other works, mainly the concertos, for one or two violins?

I think nature sounds are there, and singing and dancing and talking, and arpeggios and repeated figures, and honest-like temperament, and childish fun, and such deep moments and emotions; there is of course a lot of room for ornamentation. That’s Vivaldi. What really sets these duos apart is how he plays around and experiments in order to incorporate the basso continuo. That makes the parts particularly bold in their inner counterpoint, gesture, and rhythm. Each violin is not just one individual but many, or at least two.

These duos seem to mark a direction in your performances, and so what do you think you will do to follow on to the recording? Do you have any plans?

We always loved both new and old and the artistic exchange occurring when you go back and forth in time. We are also very interested in the duos for violin and viola by Mozart and Michael and Joseph Haydn, which are interconnected in interesting ways. There are lots of old duos that we love, and yes, among them the Sirmen duos.

What does the future hold for your projects? This is of course a way of saying “What are you working on now?” Are you going to continue to explore the rather rarified genre of duo instrument chamber works?

We have lots and lots of projects and ideas. Often, I wish that we lived in an old church and could just keep recording all year. It is one of our favorite things to do together. One CD that is already recorded and edited but in need of a last hand, texts and layout, etc., will present violin duos from the German-speaking realm during, between, around the world wars: Max Reger, Adolf Busch, Frida Kern, Paul Hindemith, Johann Nepomuk David, all wonderful music, seldom or never heard, unique expressions of that dark time. While working with the interpretation of those works, we did a project where we interviewed WWII former—or descendants of—child refugees, Jewish children, kids in bomb cellars, kids in hiding, young witnesses of abuse, rape, violence, death, young people in resistance, young soldiers. We also met children and young people of our times in similar situations. We made a short film called In the Shadow of Trauma, available on YouTube. It created a resonance in the back of our heads which somehow informs the performance of these works.

Thank you for a very informative and lively discussion. I look forward to the next project. For the readers, you might check out their equally informative and kaleidoscopic website http://www.duogelland.com.

— Bertil van Boer, 1.28.2026