Guillaume Sutre, violin
Miguel Da Silva, viola

THE IDEA OF ENCOUNTER

We know nothing of the very first meeting between Mozart and Haydn.
This friendship was singular and unique in the annals of the history of musicians. Even though there were 24 years difference between the two men, it would not appropriate to speak of a master-pupil relationship such as existed between Haydn and Beethoven. Here there was only mutual admiration, respect and influence. Each learnt from the other, modelling his orientations whilst maintaining his own course, with no dilution or renunciation of personality.
What was true for the Mozart of the quartets was also true for the Haydn of the opera buffe and who advised a Prague friend to address himself rather to his young friend for a work of this genre "for, next to the great Mozart, practically, no one can show himself". And it is said that Mozart, who could not tolerate anyone denigrating Haydn, made a mortal enemy - yet another - of a mediocre composer who was criticising a new work by his friend, "Sir, even were one were to fuse us both together, it would take more time for a Haydn to come out". This Haydn, outliving the genius who had died too young, would write to Puchberg that he had "long been beside himself with grief over Mozart's death". And to his great friend Madame von Gezinger : "It will take more than a century to find a talent of that
scope". The meeting of two performers is, certainly, more frequent than that of two composers : it is part of the very profession. Sometimes, however, it rivals them in terms of mysterious complicity. Thus, what irresistible necessity could bring together the violin of Guillaume Sutre and the viola of Miguel Da Silva, if not that which is nourished by a very profound passion - whose strengh is often, and wrongly, underestimated - for chamber music, doubled by the piercing regret of almost never hearing these duos played ?