Piano: Helen Huang
Naïve Records V8617
MIRRORS
Paul Huang and Helen Huang have been exploring the repertoire for violin and piano for now a decade. As a way of celebrating their fruitful and enriching collaboration, they have devised this album as an ingenious game of mirroring. The title of this second album for naïve is not accidental, as the two musicians offer highly diverse perspectives. This new recording focuses first on two sonatas composed by Francis Poulenc (1942-1943) and Sergei Prokofiev (1938-1946) during the second world war of the 20th century, respectively at the opening and closing of this album. Between these two pieces, Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Pärt (1978), a page with ethereal lines, a moment of introspection and calm that becomes a space for contemplation and reflection necessary in this otherwise dense and angular programme.
Poulenc composed his Sonata as a response to fascism and dedicated it to the memory of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, shot in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. The composer imagines fleeting melodies, punctuated by bold contrasts. The irregularity of the phrases, the sudden pauses, the mischievous fantasy intertwined with moments of discord, seek to transcribe the emotional and societal whirlwind that was the War, right down to these violin pizzicatos at the end of the movement evoking both the bullets of a rifle and the guitar, this iconic instrument of Lorca’s country. War also feeds Prokofiev's inspiration, in the abrasive and anguished din of the battle that the second movement imitated, in the lullaby of the third movement that dreams of a better future, as in the folk dance, lively, joyful, in reality so dramatic that its climax is a metaphor for chaos. This album encapsulates music’s profound ability to offer a poignant reflection on the past while resonating deeply with our present. In a world that often feels as tumultuous as the one that birthed these works, music offers a space for contemplation and connection.
In this maelstrom of emotions, Paul Huang and Helen Huang have grown as musicians. This new stage in their musical journey has required them to refine their sense of contrasts to connect with the rawest of human emotions. The two musicians have reinvented their duo, they have now reached a crucial moment where modesty turns into delicacy, fierceness into ferocity, tact into grace. A reflection of an ongoing journey, Mirrors is above all a mirror of their absolute mutual understanding.