Tatar Classical Music
A repertoire waiting to be heard.
Duo Mong explores the rich and largely unfamiliar world of Tatar classical music, bringing its composers and repertoire into the wider European chamber music landscape.
A music shaped by two traditions
Tatar classical music emerged in the twentieth century through a meeting of Tatar musical traditions and European classical forms and techniques.
The result is a distinctive repertoire characterised by lyrical melodies, ornamentation and the use of pentatonic scales, combined with classical forms and techniques.
Much of this music remains rarely heard outside Tatarstan. For Duo Mong, discovering and performing this repertoire is not about presenting something exotic or unfamiliar for its own sake. It is about bringing beautiful music into the conversation and giving it the opportunity to be heard.
Why this music?
For Yulia Gubaydullina and Aliya Iskhaki, Tatar classical music is part of their musical heritage and artistic experience.
Both musicians grew up in Kazan and encountered this repertoire during their musical education. After moving to the Netherlands, they began to see it from a different perspective — not only as music from their homeland, but as a repertoire with a place within the wider world of classical music.
Duo Mong creates that space: between the familiar and the undiscovered, between the repertoire we know and the music we are only beginning to hear.
THE ESSENCE
Duo Mong's debut album dedicated entirely to Tatar classical music.
The Essence features works by Farid Yarullin, Rustem Yakhin, Almaz Monasypov, Ilyas Kamal and Milyausha Khayrullina, representing different generations of Tatar classical music.
The album reflects Duo Mong's long-standing interest in discovering, performing and sharing this music — not as a cultural curiosity, but as a living part of the classical repertoire.
The album is available to listen to on Spotify.