Duets comprises five inventive pieces aimed at the intermediate double bass duo. During a long and productive career Teppo Hauta-aho composed a wealth of music for bass duet, including works for a range of abilities, creating a unique catalogue of colourful, atmospheric and rhythmic music. Each piece offers musical and technical challenges in equal measure, exploring a range of soundscapes and musical idioms which have been popular with bassists and audiences alike.

Duettino Basso is a lively and vibrant one movement work for Double Bass Duet. Composed for American bassist and educator George Vance, it offers both educational and recital opportunities, within a rhythmic and accessible idiom, with musical and technical challenges for each player. The middle section introduces harmonics in a more sustained and relaxed manner before music of a more urgent and driven nature pushes through to the end. The music for bass 2 remains in the orchestral register of the instrument and bass 1 explores more of the solo range, including simple and ethereal harmonics, but each being an equal partner in the duo.

Bass-Fest Duettino is dedicated to David Heyes and was composed after a successful Bass-Fest in 2012 when Teppo Hauta-aho was a guest tutor and Featured Composer. Remaining in bass clef throughout, this is an exciting and rhythmic work, exploring major and minor tonalities, and is an ideal study or recital work with the musical material shared between both performers.

Fizzy Basso also exists in a version for double bass and piano, composed in 2010 for ‘Fizz @ 50’, a project devised by David Heyes to commission fifty new works for double bass for his 50th birthday with a bottle of champagne as the commission fee. Fizzy Basso is brief and inventive, with bass 1 in treble clef and bass 2 in bass clef, and with effective interplay between the bassists. Few challenges but great opportunities to make music with a friend.

Mystery Duo is an old work, rediscovered in the composer’s library in 2012, but he had no memory of writing the piece and couldn’t remember anything about it.
Originally untitled, Mystery Duo seemed like the perfect title for this ‘new’ piece which Teppo Hauta-aho dedicated to his great friend and publisher David Heyes. Bass 1 plays in treble clef, contrasting bass 2 who remains in bass clef, creating a lyrical piece which explores a range of colours and timbres.

Duettino Bass II is a lively and inventive work which is played pizzicato throughout. Bass 1 is in the solo register. including thumb position, with Bass 2 remaining firmly in the orchestral register and this is always successful in performance. There are musical and technical challenges, effective interplay between the basses, with an opportunity for an improvised solo for bass 1 towards the end of the piece.

“Hauta-aho composed [Duettino Basso II] in 1996, calling chiefly on his expertise as a jazz bassist… he keeps the textures perky by maintaining soloist/rhythm section feel, with the top part hogging the lion’s share of the tunes in the first half…the duet ends with an unthreatening opportunity for both players to improvise.” (Double Bassist)