Melos Quartet Swr

Gunter Teuffel is the principal violist of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and a professor at the Stuttgart Musikhochschule. He has recorded the viola d’amore concertos of Carl Stamitz and Leos Janacek’s “Intimate Letters” in the original version with the viola d’amore, for which he was awarded the prize of the German Record Critics. Recently he recorded a new CD of “Hindemith’s Works for Viola d’Amore” with Hindemith’s own instrument.Gunter Teuffel studied with Enrique Santiago, the Melos Quartet, Sandor Végh, and with William Primrose. In 2012, he published his translation of David Dalton’s “The Art of Viola Playing, Conversations with William Primrose,” which is considered the single most comprehensive “bible” for the viola.

The stature of Johannes Brahms among classical composers is best illustrated by his inclusion among the "Three Bs" triumvirate of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. Of all the major composers of the late Romantic era, Brahms was the one most attached to the Classical ideal as manifested in the music of Haydn, Mozart, and especially Beethoven; indeed, Hans von Bülow once characterized Brahms' Symphony No. 1 (1855-1876) as "Beethoven's Tenth." As a youth, Brahms was championed by Robert Schumann as music's greatest hope for the future; as a mature composer, Brahms became the most potent symbol of musical tradition for conservative musical journalists, a stalwart against the "degeneration" represented by the music of Wagner and his school.