David A Sinclair

Der Wiener Kontrabass hat fünf statt der üblichen vier Saiten und wird mit Bünden gespielt. Dazu kommt eine spezielle Stimmung, die das Spiel in den hohen Lagen erleichtert.

David Sinclair is the singer-songwriter & music journalist from London, England who has led his nouveau-blues group the David Sinclair Four (DS4) since 2013. Apropos Blues is his sixth album released on the Critical Discs label.

This album contains world premiere recordings of Charles Ives’s complete Sets for Chamber Orchestra and Set for Theatre Orchestra. Though Charles Ives wrote large-scale works, he also thrived on miniatures. Ives’ Sets for Chamber Orchestra are largely based on his songs and display a panoply of style and technique that proves to be among the most colorful and creative of his entire compositional life. The Sets are rife with allusions and borrowings, notably hymn tunes, and reuse several pieces in slightly altered treatments. Set 9 includes The Unanswered Question in its original form. Ives was willing to embrace substitution of instruments, and this recording contains premiere recordings of new realizations and editions.

Playing the double bass as a solo instrument requires a high level of technical skill on the part of the player. At the time of the beginning of the Viennese Classical period, there were several such outstanding double bass players in Vienna and nearby Bratislava, and so the most important solo works for this instrument were written there. The "Viennese double bass" had a special feature: it had five strings instead of the usual four and was played with frets. In addition, there was a special tuning of the strings that facilitated solo playing in the higher registers. The Canadian double bassist David Sinclair is one of the few specialists for the Viennese bass worldwide and teaches historical double bass at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel. On his album "Wiener Stimmung", David Sinclair presents this extraordinary instrument with concertos and chamber music by composers such as Anton Zimmermann, Johannes Sperger, Karl Kohaut, Andreas Lidl and Franz Xaver Hammer as well as Joseph Haydn, congenially accompanied by fellow lecturers at the Schola Cantorum.