The Balanas Sisters: live at The Mildmay Club at The Mildmay Club

Having grown up in the small Latvian town of Dobele, Kristine and Margarita Balanas moved to the UK in their teens. Since studying together at the Royal Academy of Music in London, they have performed together at New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, Berlin Philharmonie, and London’s Royal Albert Hall, Barbican, and Royal Festival Hall.

This performance, their first since signing a record deal with Decca Classics, is an intimate exploration of duet repertoire for violin and cello. Taking place in Newington Green’s iconic working people’s club The Mildmay Club, the programme centres around compositions by Maurice Ravel and fellow Latvian Peteris Vasks, complimented by new arrangements of George Frideric Handel and Antonio Vivaldi made specially for The Balanas Sisters.

Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello features at the heart of the evening. Written in memoriam of Claude Debussy, it finds common aesthetic ground with Vasks’ Castillo Interior, a meditative and spiritual piece inspired by the writings of St Teresa of Ávila. It’s a journey of discovery that mirrors the sisters’ own path in music, a theme of personal reflection which links together all the music in the programme at this one-off London show.