Live at Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern Tharice Virtuosi

• Pablo de Sarasate (1844 - 1908):
• 1 Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20 (Live) 09:19
• Pjotr Iljitsch Tschaikowski (1840 - 1893):
• 2 Swan Lake (Ballet), Op. 20: Russian Dance (Live) 05:01
• Niccolò Paganini (1782 - 1840):
• 3 Mose-Fantasia, M. S. 23 (Live) 08:42
• Pablo de Sarasate (1844 - 1908):
• 4 Jota Aragonesa, Op. 27 (Live) 05:03
• Niccolò Paganini:
• 5 La Campanella (Live) 05:06
• Frank Bridge (1879 - 1941):
• 6 Lament for Two Violas (Live) 07:57
• David Popper (1843 - 1913):
• 7 Dance of the Elves, Op. 39 (Live) 03:20
• Nikolaï Rimski-Korsakov (1844 - 1908):
• 8 The Flight of the Bumble-Bee (Live) 01:42
• Antonio Bazzini (1818 - 1897):
• 9 Calabrese (Arr. by M. Waterman) (Live) 05:22
• Ion Scărlătescu (1872 - 1922):
• 10 Bagatella (Arr. by Ion Dobrinescu) (Live) 03:56
• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750):
• 11 Arioso, BWV 156 (Live) 04:23
• Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809 - 1847): String Octet in E-Flat Major, Op. 20, MWV R 20:
• 12 String Octet in E-Flat Major, Op. 20, MWV R 20: I. Allegro moderato con fuoco (Live) 14:09
• 13 String Octet in E-Flat Major, Op. 20, MWV R 20: II. Andante (Live) 07:24
• 14 String Octet in E-Flat Major, Op. 20, MWV R 20: III. Scherzo (Live) 04:34
• 15 String Octet in E-Flat Major, Op. 20, MWV R 20: IV. Presto (Live) 06:28
• Eugène Ysaÿe (1858 - 1931):
• 16 Amitié, Op. 26 (Live) 18:38
• Total Runtime 01:51:04

Info zu Live at Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern

A time there was when concert programmes comprised a merry medley of music high and low, the short and sweet alongside the longer and the lofty. That changed in the second half of the 19th century, when Richard Wagner and others introduced the concept of the “symphony concert”, usually in three weighty parts, namely an overture, a solo concerto and a symphony. With today’s emphasis on “music communication”, things seem to have gone full circle.

More and more major orchestras are offering daytime concerts in which a meaty repertoire piece is placed alongside shorter works of the kind Thomas Beecham used to call “lollipops”. The Tharice Ensemble thrives on such juxtapositions, as is evidenced by the programme recorded here. They also offer many of these smaller works in arrangements of their own. In historical terms, this is a thoroughly “authentic” approach, for it was a common practice until the 20th century began to insist on an often fictitious fidelity to a fixed text.

The earliest piece recorded here, Bach’s “Arioso”, is an ideal place to start our consideration of this meat-and-lollipops programme. Bach used it as both the Sinfonia to his Cantata No. 156 and the slow movement of his Concerto BWV 1056, but these were apparently arrangements of an earlier piece, since lost. So it’s fitting that this piece should have long achieved complete independence, with every new generation making its own arrangements – such as the version for violin solo and strings on this album.

The “meat” in our present dish is Mendelssohn’s Octet for strings, opus 20. Composed in 1825 when he was just sixteen, it arguably surpasses the achievement of any other musical prodigy, from Wolfgang Mozart to Erich Wolfgang Korngold. But even on its own terms it is one of the pinnacles of Romantic chamber music. Mendelssohn combines formal perfection with an unerring sense of drama (witness the astonishing ascent to the tonic at the end of the exposition of the first movement, about four minutes in). The slow movement is a magnificent hybrid of the angelic and the passionate, the scherzo is his first real essay in the “fairy music” for which he became famous, and the last movement is a perpetuum mobile by a master contrapuntist with a technique far beyond his years.

Liviu Prunaru, violin
Valentina Svyatlovskaya, violin
Bogdan Zvoristeanu, violin
Oleg Kaskiv, violin
Edgar Pujol, violin
Vlad Stanculeasa, violin
Sophia Reuter, viola
Ettore Causa, viola
Stanimir Todorov, cello
Pablo de Naverán, cello
Daniel Mitnitsky, cello

Live Recorded in Auditorium Martha Müller, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (Switzerland), May 2019

Tharice Virtuosi
sind ein Streicherensemble von herausragenden Solisten, das durch virtuoses Spiel, instrumentale Perfektion und Musizierfreude begeistert. Hier finden Musiker zusammen, die weltweit solistisch, kammermusikalisch oder in führenden Positionen in renommierten Orchestern und an Hochschulen tätig sind. Jeder einzelne Musiker trägt mit seinem individuellen Ton, seiner persönlichen Farbgebung und hoher Virtuosität zu einem beeindruckenden Ensemble-Erlebnis bei. Es ist eine Freude, die Frische und Dynamik der Musiker live zu erleben. Das weitgefächerte Kammermusikrepertoire reicht vom Streichtrio bis zum klassischen Streichoktett oder bis hin zur Streichersinfonie; die Werke umfassen das gesamte Streicherrepertoire vom Barock über die Wiener Klassik und die Romantik bis hin zu zeitgenössischen Stücken. Zudem spielen sie auch in vollkommen unkonventioneller Zusammensetzung, bei der jeder Einzelne aus dem Virtuosenensemble solistisch hervortritt und die selbstarrangierten Werke auf ganz persönliche Weise vorträgt. Diese Art des musikalischen Wirkens ist einzigartig und gibt den Musikern weitreichende und variable Auftrittsmöglichkeiten. Das Virtuosenensemble ist geprägt von tiefer menschlicher und musikalischer Wärme, deren Wurzeln in der gemeinsamen Zeit an der Internationale Menuhin Musik Akademie Gstaad bei Lord Yehudi Menuhin und Alberto Lysy gelegt wurden.

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet