How did you and Aura Go connect?

Our first performance together was at the Musica Viva Festival 2019 in Sydney. We pretty quickly realised that we thought of music in a somewhat similar way. I guess that is the beauty of music festivals; the festival gods assign you to play a piece of music together. Perhaps you don’t know each other, or even know the piece of music, but there you are, thrown in the deep end. During the festival, our conversations quickly morphed into, “What should we play next?”

Why did you pair works by Webern with Beethoven’s Cello Sonatas on your recent album, released by ABC Classic?

Timo-Veikko Valve. Photo © Stephen Ward

Many years ago, while still living back home in Finland, I did a project with a friend which included the transformative Beethoven Sonatas and the music of Anton Webern. The success of this project always lingered in my mind and for years, I was looking to resurrect the idea of performing this music again in a larger format by including all five Beethoven Sonatas together with Webern’s complete works for cello and piano (three individual works and his own Cello Sonata). The conversation...