Keren Motseri and Joseph Puglia first collaborated in 2016, evolving from a shared interest in the fine lines between music, sound, and silence. They have since been hailed by the press for their “fearless” performances where “voice and violin become one”, “full of intense emotions, perfectly delivered” (De Volkskrant, Ugenda.nl). Two works sit at the heart of their repertoire: Juerg Frey’s Windworter, written for Keren Motseri and given its premiere by the duo in 2018, and Gyorgy Kurtag’s Kafka Fragmenten, which they worked on with the composer, and performed around The Netherlands in 2024.
Excerpts from “Soprano Keren Motseri and Joseph Puglia fearlessly bring Kafka’s absurd dream world to life” (De Volkskrant – five star review)
Kafka’s enigmatic, absurd dream world comes to life as musical shards that sometimes last barely a minute. Motseri and Puglia carry that bowl of broken porcelain to the display cabinet in deep concentration.
With fearless technique, Motseri explores all corners of Kurtag’s extreme sound world. In Nimmermehr she jumps accurately and lyrically between enormous intervals. When a waltz suddenly appears in the last movement, Motseri and Puglia fill the space with more flair than a Viennese string orchestra. A moment later, an abstract piece of Eastern European folk music thunders into the dance salon, which the virtuoso Puglia pulls out of his violin with ferocity and passion.
After an hour of awkward wrestling and jocular frolicking, voice and violin become one in the silent In Memoriam Joannis Pilinszky. Motseri and Puglia play as if they are in the same dream together. In the very last words of the cycle, Kafka expresses what the audience has been listening to for an hour: “Wir chrochen durch den Staub, ein Schlangenpaar.” That is exactly what it sounds like: two snakes crawling their way through the dust.
Excerpts from www. nieuwenoten .nl “Festival Dag in de Branding – 50th edition” and “Joseph Puglia en Keren Motseri (Concert Review)”
One piece stands head and shoulders above the rest today: ‘Windwörter’ by Jürg Frey. This Swiss minimalist knows how to surprise us again. And not least because of the beautiful, very concentrated performance by soprano Keren Motseri, for whom Frey wrote the piece, and by violinist Joseph Puglia.
Frey always returns to the essence of sound, and therefore, of music in his work. It is minimalism with great intensity that he presents us here…In this ‘Windwörter’, voice and violin form a fragile connection with each other. The almost inaudible pizzicato preceding the word ‘Fremdheid’ is magnificent. Puglia slowly brings the sound in. Wonderful too, the way voice and violin, meandering, coincide in ‘Verlorenheid’. And Puglia’s solo is also beautiful in ‘Lange Aussicht’, where you can hear Motseri singing in your mind. This ‘Windwörter’ is a very difficult piece, full of delicate, very fragile sounds. It requires more than perfect timing, which fortunately certainly was the case in this performance.
Read the full reviews and more here: