B&B
The seven stars of the Pleiades bear the names of girls and women in Greek mythology who were in a more or less good love relationship with Zeus, the father of the gods, and were later to be transferred by him to the starry sky; the seven duets for two violas form their brief musical portraits.
The relatively young genre of the string duet poses an interesting challenge to composers, on the one hand, the lack of contrast between the instruments imposes a limitation of sonic volume, but on the other, places considerable emphasis on drawing, gesture and dialogue.
The (self-)conversation and the sound speech therefore make up the foreground in these duos, analogous to, for instance, pencil sketches of the girls' heads: in brief strokes we peer into faces in which seven different destinies have been inscribed.
Thomas Tangler, February 2023