photo: Carr-Petrvoa Duo

FIVE QUESTIONS WITH CARR-PETROVA DUO

The recital partnership established by violist Molly Carr and pianist Anna Petrova is one with a critical difference. Yes, the two have issued albums—2019's Novel Voices and 2024's HERS (reviewed here)—and given numerous concert performances, but what really sets them apart are the humanitarian projects they've spearheaded as well as the locations of their concerts, which have included renowned concert stages but also prisons and Gaza schools. These game-changing alumni of Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music are the prime movers behind the 2018-founded Novel Voices Refugee Aid Project, which raises awareness of local and international refugee-aid organizations, Project: Music Heals Us (PMHU), and the Novel Voices: Distance Learning program, whereby lessons and workshops are provided to refugee musicians and music organizations around the world. Testifying to the impact of the work they're doing, the duo's inspiring efforts were recognized at the United Nations in late 2018. Our interview's primary focus, however, centres on HERS, which honours the artistic efforts of pioneering figures such as Florence Price and Clara Schumann and contemporary composers such as Vivian Fung and Michelle Barzel Ross. textura is deeply grateful to Molly and Anna for fitting the interview into their packed schedules and for generously sharing details about their lives and professional practice.

1. First of all, where did you grow up and at which age did you start playing your instruments? Was there a particular moment in your development when you felt like the dream of becoming a professional musician could be a real possibility? And was there a particular challenge your instrument presented as you were mastering it that you had to work especially hard to overcome?

(Anna) I grew up in Bulgaria where I began studying piano at age six. Initially, it was a game to me, and being the only kid on the block with a piano at home made me feel really special. A lot of my early childhood success at the piano was measured by competition wins. While the first push towards the instrument came from my parents, there came a time where I couldn't see my future without it. After a bunch of successful competitions and auditions my father suggested that I could now quit and dedicate myself to becoming a lawyer. I was fourteen years old, and becoming a lawyer definitely did not sound interesting to me. I had participated in different summer festivals and had traveled all over Europe. Meeting peer musicians, seeing their musical trajectory, hearing about their careers and passions in music—these are the things that inspired me to want to pursue this professionally. Every summer for ten summers I would participate in the “Ohrid Summer Festival” in neighbouring Macedonia where I met many aspiring pianists, studied with a great Russian pedagogue, Boris Romanov, and made life-long friends. I remember seeing there the movie Enigma about Sviatoslav Richter—I was in awe! These were defining years that showed me the magic of music and live performance. I performed with joy and thrived on the stage. There was no going back. Then came the critical moment of choosing where to go for conservatory. I had to choose between Germany or New York City. I chose the latter and arrived with my suitcase at the age of eighteen in the jungle of the city.

Speaking of mastering the instrument and any particular challenges: do we ever master it completely? I was always lucky to have incredible teachers. I studied with two world-class pianists in New York who had phenomenal technique and incredible artistry. Sometimes, I did feel like they were gifted with these skills and did not always know how to explain all the minute physicalities that happen at the instrument. Through a lot of exploration, questioning, and synthesis of all my teachers' pedagogies, I believe I came to an understanding of the body that helps with different technical challenges. Becoming a teacher myself was also a catalyst for organizing my knowledge methodically so that I can pass it along.

My biggest challenge to this day is that we constantly play on different instruments and often they are not top-notch instruments. Sometimes it is disheartening to feel like fifty percent of your work and abilities are getting lost because of the inefficiencies of the instrument at hand. Now that doesn't apply for electric keyboards brought into prison cafeterias or refugee camps. They are perfect!

(Molly) When I was six years old living in Reno, Nevada, my mother signed me up for a “homeschool orchestra” and asked me what instrument I would like to learn. My immediate answer was an enthusiastic “The drums!” and I promptly began envisioning my life as a rock star—touring the world with fog machines and strobe lights in tow. But alas, it was not to be. My international rock star drumming career was cut short with a resounding “No way!” from the parents, and in the ensuing devastation and lamentation of a brilliant career cut short all too soon, my mother offered a consolation prize: “What about the violin?” I begrudgingly obliged and quickly discovered that I had an affinity for the instrument—although I knew with utmost clarity that climbing trees, catching lizards, and kicking soccer balls around was definitely more fun. I practiced every day like my mother told me but always with a bee in my bum waiting for the timer to go off so I could run outside to play again—until one fateful day, when I drew the short straw and my life unexpectedly changed forever.

When I was eleven years old, I stood in my violin teacher's studio with two other violinists sentenced to drawing straws in order to determine who would serve as the violist in our first chamber music group; it was I who drew the short straw and was thus handed a viola. Within the first few notes I played on the instrument, I recognized that there was something mysterious and even heart-rending in the melancholic timbre, deep tone, and even the new feel of this strange new instrument. It gripped my insides and somehow managed to uncover and coax out years of piled-up, deeply tucked-away emotions that I had been too shy to share. Immediately, my practice sessions changed from thirty-minute “‘cause Mom said so” sessions to hours upon hours of exploration and enjoyment, pushing the limits and testing out the possibilities in this new, strangely timbred voice. Within three years, I was invited to join the Perlman Music Program and here discovered the magic of chamber music. I was completely fascinated and fell in love with this mode of musical conversing among friends, and then and there decided with absolute clarity that this would be my life. Whatever this was— I wanted it, and I wanted it forever! And “the rest is history” as they say…

To answer your question of whether there was something in particular about my instrument that I had to work hard to overcome, wow, there are too many to list but a few come to mind:

First of all, thoughtful, efficient technique. I was always (and still remain) someone who will jump in with two feet and heart first and then after that discover that I have to work out the details. Many of my teachers would say this has been both my greatest weakness and greatest strength. My desire to “play my heart out” on anything often meant that the actual technique of how to best get it done was left behind. It took years and years of incredibly patient teaching and training/practicing toward thoughtful use of the body and very detailed technical thinking on the instrument to finally feel that my technique wasn't lagging behind.

Secondly, battling stage-fright! When I realized at fourteen years old that I wanted to be a musician, it of course was once again a decision of the heart first, and the details of what that meant started to sink in only in the years following. I fell in love with music-making, but as a very shy person, I didn't fall in love right away with performing. It has taken decades of fighting my own psychological battles between “trying to prove myself” on stage versus stepping out to share with others what I love to do most. And honestly? It has been playing with Anna that has clarified so much for me in this realm… if I love so much making music with this person, why shouldn't I share it with others and enjoy doing so?

Thirdly, playing on a really big viola! This one has only come within the past two years, but it has definitely been a challenge. I have the amazing privilege to be able to play the late Michael Tree's seventeen-inch Dominico Busan, generously on loan to me through the Tarisio Trust. It is truly the instrument of my dreams (I've named him Mikey), but, wow, is he a big boy! I spent twenty years playing on a fifteen-and-¾-inch viola and so switching to a monster seventeen-inch tank has meant a lot of adjustments in body use and technique. And I think only within the past few months (after two years of playing it) can I say that we're finally starting to really get along. But from day one, it's totally been worth it! I haven't found an instrument yet whose sound I love more.

photo: David Beyda

2. How exactly did the Carr-Petrova Duo come into being and when did you first play together? Was the rapport between you so immediate that it made the idea of a duo project obvious and inevitable?

(Molly) Anna and I met in 2005 when we were both freshmen at the Manhattan School of Music. We were in many of the same classes and had many of the same friends but didn't really get to know each other until a few years later. I ended up transferring to the Juilliard School partway through my undergrad and we eventually lost touch until 2012, the year we both adopted dogs. It turns out Anna adopted a Shih Tzu named Benji, and I adopted a Pitbull named Billie-Jean within just a few months of each other without knowing it. It also turns out Anna lived just twenty blocks from me and loved to walk Benji on the Hudson River, exactly where I loved to walk Billie-Jean. Now generally, my pup only took interest in humans and stayed away from other dogs, but on one of our walks, she strangely became very playful and excited interacting with a little white Shih Tzu! I was surprised to see the connection and followed the dog's leash up to meet the human… and it was Anna! While our dogs played, we sat for a while and chatted on a bench on the river and then and there decided we should play together. At first we began playing with the clarinetist Christine Carter as the Iris Trio, but within just a year or two we officially “proposed” (it was actually during a community concert in a New Orleans' soup kitchen) and agreed we would start a serious duo. It didn't take long at all to realize that we had met our “match.” I think we both would agree that it was obvious pretty quickly that we both encountered our own unique level of crazy in the other—and it was a pretty special match!

3. Your debut album as a duo, Novel Voices, was released in 2019 to considerable acclaim. In what ways is your just-released new one, HERS, different from it, and how does your playing together now compare to when you made that first recording? And could you comment on the track order you chose for HERS, as presumably the running order of the compositions was settled upon for specific reasons?

(Anna) Molly and I are both very stubborn and determined. We've always loved playing together; I'm sure our playing has changed and evolved, but one thing remains the same: our determination to play music we believe in and love. That is how our first album was born and this is also how HERS came to life. In many ways, playing together now feels easy and natural. Often in rehearsals we each know what the other will say before we've even spoken. We can complete each other's musical sentences on stage and that is artistically very fulfilling.

The track order of HERS is purposefully chosen. We wanted to alternate new with old and intertwine the personal stories of composers such as Clara Schumann, Beyoncé, and Hildegard von Bingen. While every piece on the program holds its own special place, the last piece, Magnitude by Andrea Casarrubios, is what exemplifies the idea of HERS. It is a newly commissioned work, telling the story of the Palestinian ensemble “Daughters of Jerusalem,” an all-women ensemble who write and perform their own music. They've broken with tradition to follow their dreams of becoming professional musicians and in doing so have paved the way for many more girls. This story speaks of bravery, of breaking century-old traditions, of the power of the female spirit, and of the power of the individual to make a significant change, one drop at a time. We have called it “the anthem to the ordinary person.” In the foreword of Magnitude, Andrea writes, “I couldn't help but consider the magnitude—the tremendous impact [The Daughters of Jerusalem] will continue to make, and how their courage in music can have such important repercussions in generations to come.” And on the cover of the score, she has a single drop of water falling into a pool with the resulting ripples filling the page, a visual representation of the impact even the actions of an “ordinary person” can have in changing our world.

photo: Carr-Petrvoa Duo

4. As the title intimates, HERS honours female composers in augmenting works by pioneers like Florence Price, Schumann, Amy Beach, and Rebecca Clarke with terrific pieces by living composers Vivian Fung (Prayer), Henrique Eisenmann (Halo), Casarrubios (Magnitude), and Michelle Barzel Ross (Where Things Weigh Nothing at All). To give us an impression of the album's content and scope, could you say a few words about the works by these latter four artists?

(Anna) With HERS we aim to highlight and celebrate the vision, strength, resilience, and vital contributions of the many women musicians who have come before us and who continue to lead our field forward today. Their lives and musical paths are all so different but each one inspires us to follow our dreams as twenty-first-century musicians. With this album, we pay homage to these women whose actions have created a butterfly effect of epic magnitude; it is because of their choices through the centuries that we can follow our dreams today as two female artists and continue to pave the way for those who come after us.

As mentioned before, we absolutely love the music of every composer we have commissioned for this album. They couldn't be more unique and different from each other. Henrique Eisenmann is a great friend and a fantastic jazz pianist. When gathering music for the concert program HERS (way before we even realized it would turn into a recording) we were brainstorming how to bring to the concert stage pieces that were not necessarily strictly “classical.” Beyoncé is an artist we really love and wanted to include in a program. Henrique's vision on transforming “Halo” into a concert piece is so ingenious: it is not just a transcription of the song, it is a very creative fantasy / rhapsody on the song's theme, with tons of exciting, original music. I particularly love the Brazilian jazz-inspired piano solo!

We've known Vivian Fung's work for a while and always wanted to play something by her. We approached her with a specific idea to compose something connected to or based on music by Hildegard von Bingen. We thought that Vivian would be able to dress Hildegard's chants in modern clothes and were excited about the potential outcome. Little did we know that Vivian had already written a piece based on a chant by von Bingen, her Prayer for orchestra. It was written for the NAC in Ottawa during the pandemic and premiered through a socially distanced recording in a video collage. She graciously agreed to transcribe it for viola and piano. Knowing that the piece originally lived in Vivian's imagination as an orchestral piece has presented a fun added challenge for us: we've enjoyed mimicking the full orchestra sonorities, timings, and timbres as we've brought this to life for the first time as a viola/piano version. Both in its new form as well as its original orchestral version, the piece is beautifully moving and highly personal.

Commissioning Casarrubios was not a hard decision to make. Andrea is a dear friend, and we have heard and played her music on multiple occasions. She has now grown into a major composer with her music premiered by organizations such as the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and many others. Her unique soulful, melodious, and moving style fit perfectly with the story of the Daughters of Jerusalem.

Michelle Ross is a childhood friend of Molly's, an exceptional violinist, and another unique compositional voice. During the pandemic, she was able to dedicate more time to composing and out of that came Where Things Weigh Nothing At All. Since that moment, Michelle has had her compositions premiered at such renowned festivals as Tanglewood and Lucerne and has been commissioned and recorded by some of the most beloved artists and ensembles of our time. Michelle says about her piece: “The title Where Things Weigh Nothing At All is a line from my favourite Milan Kundera novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. This is simply one of many allusions that weave in and out of the subconscious of this piece, such as a fragment of a Gregorian chant that hung above my piano where I composed the work.” We love the piece for its improvisatory character, meandering through a dream state and reality.

5. The number of activities with which you're involved is staggering. In addition to playing together as the Carr-Petrova Duo, Molly, you're the violist in the Juilliard String Quartet and, Anna, the pianist in the clarinet-viola-piano Iris Trio; you both also hold faculty positions, at The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music (Molly) and at the University of Louisville in Kentucky (Anna), and have performed globally in Bulgaria, China, Chile, Holland, Israel, Spain, Canada, the United States, and the Czech Republic. Simply put: how do you manage to fit it all in?

(Molly) My mentors and teachers always told me that “you will always find time for what you care about.” And because every piece in our lives—especially the duo—is something we care about, we figure it out! Probably that's not the most helpful answer, so here are a few methods and routines that have helped us along the way:

a. We make sure to schedule years in advance.

b. We make sure to schedule at least once a year, if not twice a year, a retreat time to reconnect, to dream and brainstorm, and check in with how we're each feeling about the duo, our projects together, and whether there are any new projects or directions we'd like to move toward. We've found that this time away from playing our instruments and just talking as friends, colleagues, and crazy dreamers really fills us up and inspires us to head with excitement and gusto toward a unified goal. Dreaming together makes us better teammates.

c. We make sure to think ahead when planning out blocks of time for rehearsal, for touring, for recording, etc. and make sure that whatever block of time we have set aside is truly devoted to the duo when we're together.

d. We make sure also to respect personal time and family wishes. We've both been in ensembles where members believe that career should always come first even if it means sacrificing time away from loved ones, holidays, etc. There is not a question if one of us says to the other, “I need to be home with my partner for this time” because we both believe that time with family is a priority higher than anything else in our lives. This means, again, that when we're together, we can really be together and not feel pulled in other directions or guilty for not being somewhere else.

photo: David Beyda

Bonus Question: The Carr-Petrova Duo has performed at Carnegie Hall and at schools in Gaza. Is the experience of performing live different at a renowned NYC concert venue than at a school in a Palestinian city?

(Molly) I believe Anna would probably answer first that it did indeed feel very different for her, as she had to play on a keyboard we carried by hand into the refugee camps; Carnegie Hall had a slightly better piano to offer! But, honestly, playing in such a diverse range of venues as Carnegie to Rikers Island to Palestinian refugee camps has taught us that we don't want our concert experience to be any different between any of these venues. In fact, as part of our annual brainstorming—this is a topic that we speak about quite a bit—we want anyone coming to our duo shows to come away feeling (no matter their level of music education or training) like:

a. They had a heck of a time!

b. That the formal wall that is typically felt between classical performers and audience members was busted to pieces.

c. That they were invited in to enjoy some of our favourite music and the stories that come with that music together with us.

I think we'd both agree that one of our favourite places to play is actually in prison. Why? Because no one knows the rules of a classical concert! And because of this, the level of committed attention and unhindered revelry in the music—without any of those standard “rules and regulations” we all tend to encounter in a classical music concert—is incredible! It makes playing a concert feel like a party. Pairing this feeling of informal accessibility with the highest quality of music-making we can muster is our mission as a duo—we're all about bringing that prison party vibe to the concert hall stages. That's where we feel most at home and most joyfully inspired.

June 2024