Bartók: Chamber Works for Violin Vol 3

At 48 minutes, the longest work here is the 44 Duos for two violins. Bartók wrote these short pieces at the request of German pedagogue Erich Doflein, who wanted contemporary music to be integrated into the earliest stages of music education. The music is folk-inspired, with borrowings from a number of cultures, but the flavour is also fully contemporary, with clashes between the lines that are pure Bartók. James Ehnes and Amy Schwartz-Moretti play them with exquisite care, as if they regard them as a sequence of miniature jewels. The performances of the other works are equally fine: the Sonatina that André Gertler arranged from a solo piano work, and Contrasts, written for Benny Goodman, here given a clear, bracing account. url.ie/f1f2