The duet is an ensemble form that spans all eras, from the earliest polyphony with its wealth of bicinia and musical riddles in the Renaissance, through the elegant sonatas of the Baroque, to the Romantic duets and the melting pot of styles of the past hundred years. All these shades and colours of repertoire can be found on our first album from 2021, in which we explored lesser-known duo repertoire. In the years that followed, we immersed ourselves in the English musical culture of the early twentieth century. The story of Arnold Dolmetsch, for instance, is far from exhausted, and in 2025 we released an album – performed on instruments we built ourselves – featuring the complete works for bamboo pipes by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
The common thread for us is the telling of a personal story: as musicians, as a duo, and from the perspective of who we are and what fascinates us. In doing so, we also seek to shine a light on music, stories and types of instruments that do not always receive the attention they deserve.
This CD, Rituals, fits perfectly within that ambition. The project grew out of friendship, a love of experimentation and unusual repertoire, and the sheer pleasure of making music together. Sören Sieg’s enthusiasm proved especially infectious.
Rituals convey meaning. They structure time, shape lives, and hold cultures and communities together. At the heart of this album lies a fascination with ritual in all its forms – spiritual, social, emotional, and artistic.
Click here to see a short video fragment of Magic Bubbles, the third movement of the suite Kampala Circus. A Teaser of the beautiful Lulwanda for tenor, greatbass and piano can be found here.
For almost all the works on this album, we chose the ‘dynamic’ recorders made by the Swiss instrument maker Geri Bollinger. These instruments are distinguished not only by their recognisable ribbed profile, but also by their particular windway and the possibility of dynamic control through a hole in the block, enabling the player to shape both dynamics and tone colour. This makes them exceptionally well suited to the music of Sören Sieg: flexible in colour, rich in nuance, and possessing a warm, earthy quality. Magical.
The recording took place in July in Warsaw, Poland. FR2’s favourite sound engineer Ulrich Lorscheider was in charge of the sound! This cd is out nown, as a physical cd. Customers that acquire the album het the music in digital mp3 formet for free in their mailbox.
