Xenia

“As I was asked by the St George Strings to lead a project from my instrument, I immediately thought about a Joseph Haydn project – his two famous cello concertos, and «The Seven Last Words of Christ». Among other things, it was inspiring and motivating for me to nd a special way of playing in the strings, so that the colour of the winds from the original version of the two cello concertos would not be missed.

A meeting between violinist David Haroutunian and Karen Khachaturian, son of the legendary composer Aram Khachaturian, inspired this new recording. Following their encounter in Paris at a concert marking the 40th anniversary of Aram Khachaturian’s passing, Karen entrusted David with the score of an unpublished sonata for violin and piano, written by his father in the early 1930s. Avant-garde in style and structured in two unique movements, the sonata stands as a remarkable masterpiece, both profound and accessible to a wide audience. “My discovery of this sonata sparked an intense desire to record all of Khachaturian’s works for violin, as no such comprehensive recording, to my knowledge, exists,” David explains. Together with pianist Xénia Maliarevitch, he set out to capture not only Khachaturian’s original compositions for solo violin and violin-piano duo but also selected arrangements of his most iconic works, including excerpts from Gayaneh and the Sabre Dance arranged by Jascha Heifetz. This album also features a previously unrecorded Dance from 1925, adding to the rich legacy of Khachaturian’s music.

Under the reign of Frederick the Great, Berlin developed into one of the most important centres of the European music scene. He brought the most important composers and musicians to his court and his court orchestra had to play both representative operas and concerts as well as in the king's private sphere.Although the king himself played the flute and strongly protected his instrument, the oboe was also of great importance and the orchestra featured four outstanding oboists.Frederick, however, was stuck in a conservative, traditional style and the once "young, wild" Kapellmusiker became increasingly weary of this musical monoculture. Thus a new music scene gradually developed in Berlin in the bourgeois milieu with house concerts and weekly academies.The "queen of the baroque oboe", as Xenia Loffler was respectfully called by BR Klassik Radio, presents on her new album a fine selection of oboe sonatas from the Berlin repertoire with works by the two Bach sons Carl Philipp Emanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann, as well as Christoph Schaffrath, Johann Gottlieb Janitsch and Carl Ludwig Matthes.