Paul Huang & Helen Huang - Mirrors (2025)

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Paul Huang & Helen Huang - Mirrors (2025)

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Paul Huang and Helen Huang have been exploring the repertoire for violin and piano for now a decade.​ As a way of celebrating their fruitful and enriching collaboration, they have devised this album as an​ ingenious game of mirroring. The title of this second album for naïve is not accidental, as the two​ musicians offer highly diverse perspectives. This new recording focuses first on two sonatas composed​ by Francis Poulenc (1942-1943) and Sergei Prokofiev (1938-1946) during the second world war of the​ 20th century, respectively at the opening and closing of this album. Between these two pieces, Spiegel im​ Spiegel by Arvo Pärt (1978), a page with ethereal lines, a moment of introspection and calm that becomes a space for contemplation and reflection necessary in this otherwise dense and angular​ programme.

Poulenc composed his Sonata as a response to fascism and dedicated it to the memory of the Spanish​ poet Federico García Lorca, shot in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. The composer imagines fleeting​ melodies, punctuated by bold contrasts. The irregularity of the phrases, the sudden pauses, the​ mischievous fantasy intertwined with moments of discord, seek to transcribe the emotional and societal​ whirlwind that was the War, right down to these violin pizzicatos at the end of the movement evoking both​ the bullets of a rifle and the guitar, this iconic instrument of Lorca’s country. War also feeds Prokofiev​'s​ inspiration, in the abrasive and anguished din of the battle that the second movement imitated, in the​ lullaby of the third movement that dreams of a better future, as in the folk dance, lively, joyful, in reality so​ dramatic that its climax is a metaphor for chaos. This album encapsulates music’s profound ability to offer​ a poignant reflection on the past while resonating deeply with our present. In a world that often feels as tumultuous as the one that birthed these works, music offers a space for​ contemplation and connection.

In this maelstrom of emotions, Paul Huang and Helen Huang have grown as musicians. This new stage in​ their musical journey has required them to refine their sense of contrasts to connect with the rawest of​ human emotions. The two musicians have reinvented their duo, they have now reached a crucial moment where modesty turns into delicacy, fierceness into ferocity, tact into grace. A reflection of an ongoing​ journey, Mirrors is above all a mirror of their absolute mutual understanding.