Sol & Pat (2021)

Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and cellist Sol Gabetta, Sol & Pat, have known each other and performed together for some years; as early as 2006, they performed La fête au village, Op. 9, of composer Julien-François Zbinden. The interview-format booklet makes this album sound a bit more spontaneous than it actually was. The program was assembled from separate recording sessions in 2014 and 2018, but the album is, on the whole, a lot of fun, mixing various kinds of 20th century music and adding a few earlier pieces for ... Read More

Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and cellist Sol Gabetta, Sol & Pat, have known each other and performed together for some years; as early as 2006, they performed La fête au village, Op. 9, of composer Julien-François Zbinden. The interview-format booklet makes this album sound a bit more spontaneous than it actually was. The program was assembled from separate recording sessions in 2014 and 2018, but the album is, on the whole, a lot of fun, mixing various kinds of 20th century music and adding a few earlier pieces for the combination. For the most part, the music was written for violin and cello, not adapted, and there are some very nice finds. Ravel's Sonata in A minor for violin and cello deserves to be more commonly heard than it is; the work nicely wraps up Ravel's language into a minimal package. There are modern pieces by Xenakis, Ligeti, Jörg Widmann, and Francisco Coll, all played with real lively enthusiasm, but best of all is the all-but-unknown Zbinden work which is apparently receiving... Read Less