Beikircher

This new recording presents in a recital structure a programme that covers five centuries of violin music. The German virtuoso Alban Beikircher presents his choice including music by Tartini, Mozart, Paganini, Ysaye and Biber among others. Two of the pieces here are an arrangement by Fritz Kreisler: the famous Devil’s Trill by Tartini with the great final cadenza by Kreisler and also the almost forgotten but charming Arabian song from Scherezade by Rimsky-Korsakov in the transcription of Kreisler. This album presents a new young composer: Tobias Peschanel , (1983) and a new piece for the repertoire : A travers les cheveux, allusions a Pelleas et Melisande by Debussy, dedicated to Alban Beikircher and in this album receives its first world recording.

5 Centuries of Violin Music presents violin repertoire out of five centuries in a recital program featuring violinist Alban Beikircher.

It is regrettable that the music of the German-Italian Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948) is largely forgotten today.

It is regrettable that the music of the German-Italian Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948) is largely forgotten today. Yet until the 1930s he was considered a legitimate successor to Verdi and Puccini and was one of the most frequently performed opera composers in the world. Not only did the First World War and fascism in Italy and Germany plunge him into a creative crisis, musical history overtook his tonal language, which then seemed finally obsolete after the Second World War. A Wolf-Ferrari renaissance is still pending, but the present successful recording with instrumental music will contribute to an overdue revision.

Lars Vogt enjoyed a meteoric rise after capturing second prize at the 1990 Leeds International Piano Competition. He managed to straddle two worlds in the process, that of soloist/recitalist and that of chamber player. He regularly appeared with front-rank orchestras across the globe and on the recital stages at major venues while founding a chamber music festival and making numerous recordings devoted to chamber works. Vogt's taste in repertory was unusually broad, taking in not only the German sphere (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven) but also a veritable potpourri (Dvorák, Saint-Saëns, Stravinsky) as well as contemporary composers (Erkki-Sven Tüür, Volker David Kirchner). He possessed a powerful technique and a chameleonic interpretive persona that together allowed him to capture the subtleties and negotiate the challenges presented by this vast array of composers.