An unusual pairing – a feast for the senses in stunning sound

This is quite simply one of the most outstandingly magical discs I have heard. From the very first notes one is totally captivated by the fantastic richness of the sound produced by the combination of the viola d’amore and the cello. The viola’s sound is precisely described by Paul Griffiths in his notes when he writes of a “rainbow resonance” – the phrase describes the shimmering harmonic aura created around the music by the freely resonating sympathetic strings. And it traverses, as this recording amply demonstrates, time as well as acoustical space: Knox’s transcriptions of Marais and Hume, not to mention of traditional melodies (“Celtic Dance/I once loved a lass/Jig”) work marvellously, making the two instruments merge into some kind of enormously expanded viola da gamba.

The contemporary works, with the exception of Knox’s own inevitably idiomatic fantasy on “Malor me bat”, might seem initially to work against this resonant universe built on the harmonic series, but in fact they are all carefully written with the instrument’s possibilities in mind. Klaus Huber’s …Plainte… is dedicated to Luigi Nono, and it transfers something of the Italian’s fragmented late sound world very successfully to solo viola d’amore, making use in the process of special tunings (three strings are tuned in third-tones). Shortly after listening to this disc for the first time, I was able to hear Knox and Vesterman in concert. While seeing these two instruments interacting as well as hearing them is an undoubted feast of the senses, the stunning sound of this remarkable CD will disappoint nobody.

-- Ivan Moody, Gramophone [9/2008]