Recordings
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Arnold Schoenberg: Violin Concerto. Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna/Caridis (ORF live, plus Violin Concerto from Urbanner, see below)
This work is incredibly colorful. More in the booklet. You have to hear it, and often. It is hard to understand that it was once not only considered unplayable, but also indigestible.
LISTEN: Excerpt 3rd Movement Excerpt 2nd Movement Excerpt 1st Movement
Bernd-Alois-Zimmermann: Violin Concerto. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Eötvös (live)
I’ve always been very interested in composers’ views of other people’s works. Thus, it was enriching to play the Zimmermann Concerto under the direction of Peter Eötvös with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. I had already recorded two other violin concertos with this wonderful orchestra (Urbanner and Baird), but had not performed live with them. I had already played the Zimmermann Concerto, among others in Vienna, and got to know the acoustic and interpretational challenges for the conductors of the enormously manned orchestra.
Bach: Solo Works. Partita in D minor, Sonata in A minor
One of the most important recordings of my life!
What timeless music!
The range of my coaches and discussion partners goes a long way: spatially, temporally, stylistically.
Richard Dünser: Violin Concerto. Wiener Symphoniker/Runnicles
ORF- Recording of the world premiere, Bregenz Festival.
Richard Dünser, today professor at the the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG), shared early on his affinity for German poetry, especially Romanticism, with me. Even then his ideas for a violin concerto circled around Hölderlin’s famous poem “Half of Life”.
Charles Ives. The 4 Violin Sonatas and Largo for Violin and Piano. With Herbert Henck (Piano).
LP double album
A happy coincidence made me stumble across an extensive newspaper interview with Henck in the early 1980s. I greatly appreciated what he said about music, as well as what he said about Charles Ives, of whom I knew shamefully little at the time.
Bela Bartók: The 44 Duos for 2 Violins. With Peter Lefor
Great music, masterpieces in a confined space. At the same time educational pieces not only for pupils, but for everyone who is concerned with the connections between fine art music and folk music – including contemporary music.
Musical Instruments of the Ferdinandeum: Works by Bach, Frescobaldi, Castello, Fontana, Corelli
It all started with a tantrum. At the beginning of the 1970s I had the opportunity to see some of the musical instruments of the Ferdinandeum Museum in Innsbruck, which were locked away in dusty storage rooms and stacked all over each other. A gloomy chaos. Historical keyboard instruments were dusting away, interesting violins, historical bows, rare wind instruments.
Alfred Schnittke: 3rd Violin Concerto and Urbanner, Violin Concerto. Innsbruck Chamber Orchestra/Urbanner
This first radio production of the Urbanner Concerto appeared on an ORF CD—which is unfortunately out of print—together with a recording of Schnittke’s 3rd Violin Concerto, which is played by nearly the same line-up same as Urbanner: String Quartet (two string trios in Urbanner) and Brass Tutti.
I had advocated intensely to bring the compilation of these pieces together on one CD, both of which were excellently conducted by Urbanner.
Alban Berg: Violin Concerto. Tiroler Symphonieorchester/Keuschnig
B.A. Zimmermann: Violin Concerto (1950). Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks/Eötvös
Arnold Schönberg: Violin Concerto. Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien/Caridis
LISTEN to 3three Live Recordings
Berg-Konzert: This is one of the works I have performed most often. There’s a nice dress rehearsal recording in my private archive that was taken when I was just turned 18. It is hard to imagine that the work was only 31 years old at the time. Well-intentioned colleagues seriously asked why I was wasting my talent on such terrible music. Because of this recording I was invited to Vienna to meet Alban Berg’s widow, Helene Berg, an impressive lady who told and showed me a lot about her Alban.
Olivier Messiaen: Quatuor pour la fin du temps. With Alfons Kontarsky, Walter Nothas, Martin Schelling.
I rehearsed this apocalyptic work with a coach for the first time as a founding member of the Austrian Ensemble for New Music, which still exists today. This coach was the composer Klaus Ager, recently back in Austria after his studies in Paris with Messiaen. A series of performances followed, often commented by Ager for the audience (and us).
Charles Ives: Piano Trio and John Cage, Music for Three. With Werner Bärtschi and Wen-Sinn Yang
After recording the complete violin sonatas of Ives together with Herbert Henck, the trio fascinated me very much. Ives, with his vision of a “better America” and thus a better world, was the focus of my interest at the time and is now more topical than ever. Werner Bärtschi had published the memos of Ives in German and had been recommended to me both as a pianist and composer by Henck.
Simone Fontanelli: „Martin“ Three Solo Pieces of the Violin
The Italian composer Simone Fontanelli, winner of the Mozart Competition Salzburg, wrote these three portrait solo pieces for me.
Link to SHOP
The three pieces show that Fontanelli can do both: highly virtuosic and quite simple. Both with great eloquence. That’s why I encouraged him to write small pieces for children that would lead them into the magical world of New Music at an early age. Since Bartók’s duos and those of Berio there has been little of this kind in sufficient quality. The result were his charming “Spots” for young violinists and later the successful children’s opera “Es war einmal ein Stück Holz” (Pinocchio).