On this recording the Duo MAISS YOU presents two standard works of the modern classical literature, Béla Bartók’s Sonata for Violin and Piano no.2 (1922) and Leoš Janáček’s Sonata for Violin and Piano (1914-21), contrasting them with the Sonata for Viola and Piano, op.156 (2018 - world premiere recording), by the contemporary composer Roland Leistner-Mayer (b.1945).

Bartók and Janáček (who were both dedicated ethnomusicologists) take the folk music of their Hungarian and Moravian native countryside as starting point for bold and inspired creations. For both composers, the return to folk music was not a nostalgic longing for the good old days, but a source of new ways of expression which they then expand and develop; an enrichment of modern music with a folk music-inspired facet.

The composer Roland Leistner-Mayer, born in Bohemia, distanced himself from the experimental avantgarde in favour of an expressive, authentic musical diction. He has found stimulus and inspiration in the modern style of Bartók and Janáček, among others, which he has taken up fruitfully and made his own.

The Duo MAISS YOU was founded by Burkhard Maiss and Ji-Yeoun You. The duo formation is dedicated to the violin and piano and – to the same degree – to the sister genre for viola and piano. In order exciting combinations of compositions even within a single programme, the duo utilizes both and the viola in their concerts – a practice only rarely present in concert life nowadays.