Kontai Ensemble make two strings feel limitless on debut EP 'Trost'

Across four compositions for violin and cello, Munich-based Kontai Ensemble create a debut EP that feels far larger than its minimal setup suggests. Teresa Allgaier and Juri Kannheiser bring extraordinary sensitivity and imagination to the material, moving through contemporary classical ideas with the freedom of artists equally comfortable around experimental pop, jazz and more left-field musical worlds.

But instead of treating violin and cello as something delicate or restrained, they use them as engines for texture, tension, movement and surprise. Each composition arrives with its own personality, yet the performances give the EP a strong sense of unity.

'Hall of Mirrors', composed by Annamaria Kowalsky, opens with an evocative sense of reflection and transformation, while Ralph Heidel's 'On that very day' continues that feeling of constant motion. Friederike Bernhardt's 'Locked-In Syndrome' brings a more intense psychological quality into the centre of the EP, before Matīss Čudars' 'Sway' closes the collection with a title that perfectly suits their fascination with rhythm and physicality.

The diversity between the four composers is one of the EP's greatest strengths. They arrive from different corners of contemporary music, spanning classical composition, electronics, jazz and pop, and aren't flattened into one house style. Instead, Allgaier and Kannheiser seem to relish them, allowing each piece to reshape what the duo can become.

'Trost' was captured inside Maria Trost, a chapel in southern Germany, and its resonance gives the music an extraordinary sense of depth. Notes linger, bloom and interact with the room around them, as the architecture becomes part of the performance itself, adding warmth, mystery and scale.

Here, Kontai Ensemble take four compositions, two string instruments and one resonant room, and somehow make the possibilities feel endless.