City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney
January 20, 2015

Béla Bartók was probably the 20th century’s most innovative collector and arranger of folk music. Committed to preserving the musical legacy of his native Hungary, he was also one of the most distinctive and original composers of the period – one bar of his music is often enough for you to say “ah, that’s Bartók”. His 44 duos for violin are typical of his approach to traditional music, the melodies preserved, the arrangements ‘authentically’ adjusted to suit the composer’s tangy harmonic language.

With many of the duos coming in at under a minute, they can seem slight or elusively fleeting on record. I’ll admit that sitting down to listen to them all straight through on the CD player isn’t at the top of my ‘how to spend an evening in’ list, so I was curious as to how Czech violinists Iva Bittová and Hana Kotková would tackle the set in the concert hall.

Bittová has made her name in the Czech avant-garde. She’s a gifted violinist but, as her opening ‘warm-up’ demonstrated, she’s very much a performance artist. With a bob and a curtsey she bounded barefoot onto the Angel Place stage and...