Search Results for "Arabella Steinbacher"

Szymanowski & Dvorak – Violin Concertos – Arabella Steinbacher, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Marek Janowski (2009)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 01:11:43 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: pentatonemusic.com |  © PentaTone Classics
Recorded: Haus des Rundfunks, Berlin, 5/2009

Would you please write me a violin concerto? A truly original one, full of melodies and written for good violinists? Please, drop me a line!”
These words in a letter from the publisher Simrock to , dated January 27, 1879, resulted in the composition of his Violin Concerto in A minor. Although Dvorák concluded the work towards the end of the summer of 1879, after completing his exceedingly successful Slavonic Dances, a further four years would pass before the violin concerto finally appeared in print and actually received its première. With his reference to “good violinists”, Simrock (ever on the lookout for a good business deal) prob- ably had one person in particular in mind: Joseph Joachim. Two years previously, this violinist – who nowadays would enjoy the status of a megastar – had “launched” the violin concerto written by Johannes Brahms, following a period of intensive collaboration with the composer. So it seemed only logical that Dvorák – who was now also gaining an international reputation – would write the next concerto specifically for the famous virtuoso. During the summer, Dvorák and Joachim spent some “pleasant and delightful moments” together in Berlin. It seemed as if nothing would stand in the way of a rewarding and steady collaboration. Thus in the autumn of 1879, Joachim received the manuscript of the concerto. However, apart from his thanks for the dedication, his reaction was mainly to send back a list of requests for massive changes in both the formal structure of the work and the solo violin part. After meeting personally with him in April 1880, Dvorák decided to fundamentally revise the work, which he concluded the following May.

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Bela Bartok – The Two Violin Concertos – Arabella Steinbacher, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Marek Janowski (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 01:01:11 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: pentatonemusic.com |  © PentaTone Classics
Recorded: Victoria Hall, Geneva, Switzerland, June/July, 2009

Whilst unfulfilled passion and unre- quited love have driven many to depression, Béla Bartók was able to sublimate such personal disappointment into exuberant creativity. In February 1908, after his passionate courting attempts had been rejected by the Swiss violinist, Stefi Geyer, Bartók wrote her: “Having read your letter, I sat down at the piano – and had the sad premonition that, in life, music is to be my only consolation.” He illustrated these lines with a musical quotation which included the broken major-seventh chord, c-sharp – e – g-sharp – b-sharp, adding the words: “This is your leitmotiv.” It will have been particularly bitter for the composer that he had completed the score of the violin concerto, which had been written for Stefi, and into which he had poured his profound feelings for her, just a few days before her rejection. It is also to her that he dedicated the concerto, which, as in “a narcotic dream” (Römer), had been inspired a year earlier by his intoxicating love for her, but he did not do so without adding a tragic poem by Béla Balázs to the autograph score. Stefi Geyer kept the score until her death in 1956, with- out every performing the concerto publicly. It was not until 30 May 1958, thirteen years after Bartók’s death, that the concerto finally had its first public performance, in Basel, under the baton of Paul Sacher, with Hansheinz Schneeberger as soloist.

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