„Duo Cantolegno leads its audience into a world of the highly nuanced sounds of violin and guitar“

(Schaumburger Zeitung und Landeszeitung)

Cantolegno – the name also expresses the young duo's musical aim: The wood (ital.: legno) of the violin and the guitar begins to vibrate and to sing (ital.: canto), deeply moving the souls of their listeners.

Founded in 2012, their repertoire contains a wide range of baroque and classical sonatas, as well as romantic and contemporary works. Furthermore, this duo especially focuses on Latin American and Spanish music, as well as self-penned compositions, giving the concerts various personal and individual elements.

„The audience is taken onto a journey into its dreams, memories, and into distant lands.“

(Yehudi Menuhin LIVEMUSICNOW e.V., Kristina Rhein)

The guitarist Matthias Greenslade and the violinist Julia von Allwörden-Eberling graduated from Hanover's, Hamburg's and Berlin's colleges of music. Now their studies continue in Münster. They worked in chamber music lessons and in masterclasses with professors like Anita Rennert, Olaf van Gonissen, Kana Sugimura, Thomas Müller-Pering, Andreas Lehmann and Sanel Redžić.

Regular concerts lead the young musicians to many extraordinary places like the „NDR Musikfest Hannover“, the University of the arts Berlin, the „Harleshäuser Musikfest“ or the castle of Meiningen. Duo Cantolegno also plays at private events and in social institutions, e.g. „Klassik in der Klinik e.V.“. In 2019 Duo Cantolegno played a concert at the „Musikwoche Hitzacker“ festival.

In 2015 Duo Cantolegno was given a scholarship by „Yehudi Menuhin – Live Music Now Hamburg“, an organization that supports young musicians and brings music to people who cannot go to concerts due to their circumstances.

In 2017 Duo Cantolegno won several concert engagements in the music competition "Hannoversche Börse der Musiktalente".

For these two young musicians, music education programs are a matter very close to the heart. Therefore Duo Cantolegno has developed an interactive children's concert named „Kofis Koffer“ (“Kofi's bag”) as well as the concert project „Auf der Wolke des Spirion“ (“On Spirion's cloud”). These concerts were realized with the support of „Yehudi Menuhin – Live Music Now Hamburg“.

Duo Cantolegno attaches great importance to communicating with their audience, especially by presenting their concerts and by playing expressively. This could also be seen when they developed an exchange of ideas between themselves and their audience using postcards in the „Cantolegno – Postkartenaktion“.

Last but not least their various concert programs and formats benefit from the young musicians’ great variety of interests. Apart from their musical education and concert activities both of them study a teacher-training course; Julia von Allwörden-Eberling with the subjects of music and philosophy, Matthias Greenslade with music and mathematics.

Matthias Greenslade