They are both stars in their own right - and yet, on this duo evening, violinist Julian Rachlin and pianist Kirill Gerstein prove that the whole can still be more than the sum of its parts. The collaborative togetherness of chamber music is not about pugnacious self-expression, but about placing the works themselves in the limelight. The classical centrepiece is Ludwig van Beethoven's Violin Sonata op. 30/2 in the 'key of fate', C minor, the middle work of a three-piece set dedicated to the Russian Czar Alexander I. Around this sit three compositions, all written within only three decades around 1900. All oscillate longingly by various degrees between the late romantic and modern: the technically demanding E-flat major sonata by the 23-year-old Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy's rigorously thematically developed late work from the year before his death at age 55, and the aphoristic, shimmering, meticulously balanced miniatures of Anton Webern's Opus 7.

Shuttlebus Tickets:

16:30: Shuttlebus departs from Albertina (Operngasse 4-8), EUR 35,- buy here