Glass: Double Concerto for violin and cello

The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, conducted by Mikko Franck, perform Philip Glass's Double Concerto for violin and cello, with Gidon Kremer et Giedre Dirvanauskaitė. Concert recorded live on 5 October 2018 at the Grande salle Pierre Boulez of the Philharmonie de Paris.
PHILIP GLASS (1937) : Double Concerto for violin and cello - Composed in 2010 and first performed on 22 April 2010.
Duet N°1 - Part 1
Duet N°2 - Part 2
Duet N°3 - Part 3
Duet N°4
"For string writing, there was only one solution. I borrowed a violin from the school and began to take violin lessons. By accident or, perhaps, by design, I found myself sitting next to a pleasant, beautiful young woman in my Literature & Musicology class. Her name was Dorothy Pixley, soon to become Dorothy Pixley-Rothschild, as she was engaged to be married the next year. We soon became friends and I asked her for violin lessons, to which she happily and easily agreed. I found, in general, that my fellow students at Juilliard were always very kind in matters like this. It was easy to get help and I often consulted friends for any information or assistance I might need. So, I began playing scales, developing some rudimentary skills in fingering and bowing. I also started writing music for Dorothy-string quartets, a trio, and even the concerto for solo violin, winds, brass, and percussion that I composed when I was at the Aspen Music School studying with Darius Milhaud in 1960. Though I never became even a decent violinist, I learned what I needed to write well for the instrument. Since then I have composed seven string quartets, two violin concertos, two cello concertos, and a double concerto for violin and cello."
The above text was written by Philip Glass in 2015, in his autobiography whose title Words without Music was undoubtedly inspired by Milhaud's Notes sans musique. Five years earlier, the American composer had fulfilled a commission from the Nederlands Dans Theater by composing this Double Concerto, first performed during a show entitled "Swan Song", choreographed by Sol Léon and Paul Lightfoot. The commission stated a work for orchestra, but Philip Glass wished to add two soloists in order to create a true symbiosis with the two-step of the principal dancers. The concertante dialogue between a violin and a cello had already kindled the imagination of various composers before Glass, including Vivaldi, Johann Christian Bach, Stamitz, Reicha, Donizetti, Saint-Saëns, Ysaÿe, Vieuxtemps, Delius, Pfitzner, Röntgen, Rózsa, Cerha, Moret, Schnittke, Lou Harrison and Ned Rorem. After 2010, Dusapin, Escaich, Harbison and James Horner were also inspired to discover this particular combination. However, one must not forget Brahms, author of the greatest masterpiece of the genre, his final orchestral work, the Doppelkonzert for violin, cello, and orchestra from 1887. Ravel also combined the two instruments, but without orchestra, in a wonderful Sonata composed in 1920 in memory of Debussy.
Faithful to his "minimalist" style, and aware of this heritage, Philip Glass's concerto is situated squarely between the concerto genre and the sonata, a work that alternates between for intimate duets with the two soloists and three concertante movements. First performed on 22 april 2010, the work quickly travelled the entire world: from Hong Kong to Odense, passing through Istanbul, Tokyo, Kansas City, Moscow, Budapest, Atlanta, Madrid, and Dallas, with violonists such as Tim Fain and Gidon Kremer, and cellists renowned including Matt Haimowitz, Giedré Dirvanauskaitė and Wendy Sutter (for whom the work had originally been composed alongside violinist Maria Bachmann).
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