Bass Solo

Bassist Victor Wooten began his musical career early. At age three, his brother Regi taught him to play bass, and at age five he made his stage debut with his four older brothers in the Wootens, playing songs by R&B mainstays like James Brown, Sly & the Family Stone, War, and Curtis Mayfield. After playing regional tours and opening for acts like Mayfield and War, the Wootens recorded an album in 1985. However, the record received little commercial or critical response, and eventually the Wooten Brothers found other gigs.

Hans Fryba (24 April 1899 – 3 January 1986) – an Austrian composer and double bassist. He graduated in Vienna in the double bass class of Eduard Madenski. He continued his instrumental career, performing with orchestras such as the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of Megaron Mousikis. Due to his outstanding performance skills, Fryba requires similar virtuosity from the instrumentalist in his compositions. Despite the fact that his work includes only three pieces for double bass, each of them contains an individual compositional feature and a number of technical and musical difficulties. To this day, the most frequently performed work is the Old Style Suite, which, also due to its sound qualities, is often performed during international double bass competitions.

Three Capriccios for double bass solo combine features of the etude and the 20th-century rhythm-driven miniature. Despite the melodic simplicity, their enigmatic form testifies to the originality of each of the three pieces. In turn, the Romance for piano and double bass is full of noble simplicity, while its songful theme is subjected to subtle harmonic procedures, intensifying the idyllic character…

This album hums and growls, it whispers very delicately and causes a pleasant feeling again and again. It is the warm, deep and full tone of the double bass that has taken hold of the young Viennese soloist Dominik Wagner. This is already the fourth album he is releasing on the label Berlin Classics. As on the three previous albums, he has placed the double bass at the center, and yet everything is different on the new album "Double Bass Rhapsody". Here, the double bass is heard exclusively as a solo instrument, in a quartet and even in a sextet. For this, Dominik Wagner has enlisted the best colleagues he can imagine: Christoph Wimmer and Herbert Mayr, both principal double bassists of the Vienna Philharmonic, who share with him an authentic connection to the Viennese style. And José Trigo, deputy principal double bass of the BR Symphony Orchestra, who, like Dominik Wagner, also studied with Professor Dorin Marc. "In order to bring out the special features of the double bass, there is no need for any other instrument" explains Dominik Wagner.