In a chamber music performance, performers as well as listeners seem to highly value the potential of musical and emotional connection and intimacy unfolding within the ensemble as a result of high-level interplay. Those special moments of profound togetherness are experienced both aesthetically and socially, as an intense musical as well as interpersonal relationship between the musicians.

Looking at the duo as the nucleus of ensemble, this research aims for a deeper understanding of this relationship. In order to explore how relationality is embedded in duo performance and what this entails for the process of interpretation as well as the quality of interplay, it seems crucial to examine how structural relationality contained in the score as well as the interpersonal relation established during performance both contribute to the musical interplay.

This presentation will focus on an ongoing study on the Sette Duo by Maurizio Pisati (*1959), for which I engage in several different duo constellations in order to artistically explore how exactly two individuals or entities can act in relation to each other and how this can be configured musically. Combining conceptual contextualisation with critical duo practice that links the aesthetic experience of musical interplay with the qualitative experience of interpersonal phenomena, this example of Artistic Research offers a new perspective on the problem of relation. Beyond its artistic relevance, this may provide the opportunity to reinterpret dyadic relation and point towards an enhanced understanding of how we relate altogether – to each other, to ourselves and the world.