Antje Weithaas . Tabea Zimmermann

Mozart (1756-1791) wrote the two Duos for violin and viola in G, KV423 and B flat, KV424 in Salzburg in 1783 as a favour to his friend Johann Michael Haydn. Haydn had been commissioned by Archbishop Colloredo to write six duos for violin and viola. When he had finished four of them he fell ill, making it impossible to continue. However, if he were late submitting them he risked losing his fee, so he called on Mozart for help. Mozart wrote the two missing duos in just two days and allowed Haydn to submit them in his own name. Louis Spohr (1784-1859) was the greatest German violinist and teacher of his day. He wrote his duos for violin and viola mainly for his own concert performances or those of his students. The forty-four violin duos by Bela Bartok (1881-1945) were also originally for educational purposes, written at the request of a music teacher friend. But they are more than ordinary exercise pieces. Each one is a fully-fledged miniature that highlights the innovative aspects of Bartok's compositional style. The Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) integrated the most diverse influences into his work, from Czech folklore to jazz. The three madrigals for violin and viola from 1947 illustrate his great admiration for the refined polyphony of the seventeenth-century English madrigal.