Duologues

Duologues gathers Baroque music for two instruments into a lively exchange between friends. Rachel Podger leads on violin, partnered in turn by Lucie Horsch on recorder, Jane Rogers on viola and Alex Rolton on cello. The program centers on Bach’s Inventions, heard in Fred Thomas’s arrangements for violin and viola, along with the Four Duettos, Sinfonias Nos. 10 and 12, and the Badinerie from the Orchestral Suite No. 2. Telemann’s Sonatas (TWV 40:118 and 40:111), C.P.E. Bach’s Duet for flute and violin, Wq. 140, and a movement from Boismortier’s Op. 51 give the recorder and violin their own conversations. The album ends with the traditional tune “The Kid on the Mountain.”

Mark Seow’s liner essay, “To-ing and Fro-ing,” links the music to the slow, deliberate letter writing of the 18th century. Composers like Bach, Telemann, Handel and Boismortier wrote to each other, often waiting years for a reply, while duo playing offered a more immediate kind of dialogue. Bach meant his Inventions to teach students to play cleanly in two and three parts and to develop ideas, and here they turn into playful, quick-witted conversation, with voices that imitate, answer, tease and persuade. With no harpsichord to hand, the single-line instruments take on different personas as the music requires. Recorded at the Church of St Mary and St Eanswythe in Folkestone, with Podger playing a 1739 Pesarinius violin, the album works as a portrait of Baroque music at its most social.

Rachel Podger, violin
Lucie Horsch, recorders
Jane Rogers, viola
Alex Rolton, cello