10 Ten
(Ten Composers, Ten Compositions, Violin and Piano Music)
JUSTINA AUŠKELYTĖ ROSSI, violin
CESARE PEZZI, piano
The number 10 flaunts on the cover of our album and intertwines throughout the entire album project. But why is our new album focused on this number? Celebrating our first decennial together as a duo, we decided to give ourselves a little homage – a new album. Being 2019 our 10th year of collaboration and friendship, we took 10 violin and piano masterpieces by 10 different composers and put them into one album. Symbolically, each composition recorded on this album represents one year of our work together. Looking back since 2009, there have been way more than 10 days of rehearsals, endless travels, concerts, musical confrontations, intense work, discussions or laughter to tears. 10 years of friendship that binds us deeply and enriches us more and more every day.
A journey through ten pieces, ten moods, (two times) ten fingers, ten composers and ten styles is a delightful reminder of how the time of a recording can encompass a whole universe of feelings, emotions and imaginations.
10 composers, 10 compositions, 10 years Duo Auskelyte – Pezzi. The violinist Justina Auskelyte and the Italian pianist Cesare Pezzi seal their ten-year friendship and collaboration with a run through the musical history of the 19th and 20th centuries.
From the varied programme, the listener will remember above all the brilliant final movement of the Schumann Sonata, the no less brilliant Brahms Scherzo, a well-proportioned, passionate Tzigane and the urgently virtuosic Improvviso by Nino Rota. But also the quieter pieces by Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and Tor Aulin are played very well, very sensitively, with a natural, unpathetic gesture.
A beautiful CD with a lovely program!© Remy Franck, 2019 Pizzicato
BALYS Dvarionas:
Complete Works for Violin and Piano
JUSTINA AUŠKELYTĖ, violin
CESARE PEZZI, piano
One of the most gifted and prominent of all twentieth-century Lithuanian musicians, Balys Dvarionas was a musical polymath who excelled as a composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. He viewed his native country’s folklore as a fundamental part of his artistic heritage and his aesthetic ideas were formed under the influence of nineteenth-century Romanticism. His violin works occupy a special place in his oeuvre. The Sonata-Ballade is his violin masterpiece, full of idiosyncrasies and luminous warmth, while the miniatures encompass subtle charm and effortless virtuosity.
Several of these offerings are charming miniatures, including an Andante Cantabile, a Waltz, a March, and a Romance. Dvarionas’s ability to write seemingly effortless tunes is impressive. ‘Pezzo Elegiaco’ is gently impassioned; ‘Recollection’ is a subtle exploration of chromaticism and whole-tone harmony. Auskelyte’s trills are exquisite here, and her tone is always warm and gratifying.
The Sonata-Ballade, the major work on the program, begins with pensive, harmonically ambiguous chords; the violin quickly joins with a rhapsodic melody. The discourse in this single-movement piece is mainly lyrical, but there are startling interruptions of grotesque folk material in the manner of Prokofieff and Shostakovich. It all ends with a gorgeous dreamlike melody in the violin’s highest register followed by near-inaudible violin plucks. Dvarionas may be a minor composer, but he is imaginative, soulful, and easy on the ears.”
© Jack Sullivan, 2017 American Record Guide Read complete review
“The duo…clearly understand each other very well since they have been playing together for 8 years and violinist Justina Auškelyte has been laureate of the National Balys Dvarionas Violin Competition four times in succession and was Grand Prix laureate in the 8th International Balys Dvarionas Competition in 2008 so she is the perfect vehicle to bring his music to life, which she certainly does, while her colleague, Italian pianist Cesare Pezzi, is such a sympathetic partner that the music is given an extra edge of authenticity and I cannot imagine it will ever be likely to receive more impressive performances.”
© Steve Arloff, 2017 MusicWeb International Read complete review
“The two artists here are adept and feel completely in sympathy with the idiom. The vivid recording is no obstacle to their playing.
These are winning miniatures—some emotionally complex, some less so. I hope that this delightful disc serves as a positive pathfinder for recordings of Dvarionas’s major works. Meantime it can be enjoyed in its own right.”
© Rob Barnett, 2017 MusicWeb International Read complete review