Two fine soloists make their duo debut
The Strad Issue: November 2025
Description: Two fine soloists make their duo debut
Musicians: Merel Vercammen (violin) Maya Fridman (cello) Cappella Amsterdam/Daniel Reuss
Works: Gubaidulina: Rejoice! Shalygin: Angel. Vasks: Plainscapes
Catalogue number: All Ears Records AERCD002
This debut duo release from Dutch violinist Merel Vercammen and Moscow-born cellist Maya Fridman is a deeply thoughtful collection of works that dives deep into music for reflection and contemplation, but it might perhaps have benefitted from a little more stylistic variety to ensure engagement from start to finish. Not that there’s any lack of commitment or insight from either player.
The two bring wonderfully clean, shapely lines to Pēteris Vasks’s slowly unfolding Plainscapes, inspired by the endless horizons of his native Latvia, blending an almost clinical precision with deeply human and heartstring-tugging harmonies to moving effect. The piece is for the unusual and very effective combination of violin, cello and chorus, and the two string players bring a velvety texture to the sometimes austere lines of Cappella Amsterdam.
Ukrainian composer Maxim Shalygin wrote his Angel specially for Vercammen and Fridman, and they deliver a similarly pensive account, one that again brings a sense of human warmth to Shalygin’s richer harmonic vocabulary. Gubaidulina’s 1981 Rejoice! is the widest-ranging piece here in stylistic terms, its succession of volatile sonic effects deployed to illustrate a set of religious aphorisms, all negotiated with a convincingly theatrical sense by the two musicians.
It’s a disc that demands and repays close listening, but despite its fine performances, it also feels like a little too much of quite similar things, so is perhaps best enjoyed in small doses. The musicians are captured in close, authentic recorded sound.
DAVID KETTLE
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