Pur ti miro Wu Wei, Martin Stegner, Janne Saksala

• Claudio Monteverdi (1567 - 1643): Madrigals, Book 9:
• 1 Monteverdi: Madrigals, Book 9: Si dolce è il tormento (Perf. on Sheng, Viola & Double Bass) 03:17
• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750): Trio Sonata No. 1 in E-Flat Major, BWV 525:
• 2 Bach: Trio Sonata No. 1 in E-Flat Major, BWV 525 (Perf. on Sheng, Viola & Double Bass): I. [Allegro moderato] 02:45
• 3 Bach: Trio Sonata No. 1 in E-Flat Major, BWV 525 (Perf. on Sheng, Viola & Double Bass): II. Adagio 06:43
• 4 Bach: Trio Sonata No. 1 in E-Flat Major, BWV 525 (Perf. on Sheng, Viola & Double Bass): III. Allegro 03:50
• 5 Bach: Trio Sonata No. 4 in E Minor, BWV 528: II. Andante (Perf. on Sheng, Viola & Double Bass) 05:58
• Claudio Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea, SV 308, Act III:
• 6 Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea, SV 308, Act III: Pur ti miro (Perf. on Sheng, Viola & Double Bass) 03:53
• Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741): Trio Sonata in D Minor, RV 63 "La Folia":
• 7 Vivaldi: Trio Sonata in D Minor, RV 63 "La Folia" (Perf. on Sheng, Viola & Double Bass) 09:42
• Traditional: Bruremarsj frå Beiarn:
• 8 Traditional: Bruremarsj frå Beiarn (Perf. on Sheng, Viola & Double Bass) 03:01
• Total Runtime 39:09

Info for Pur ti miro

“An entirely new world of sound opened up for me. I had never heard early music like that before: so rich in colour, so immediately moving,” says violist Martin Stegner of his first experience playing Monteverdi with Wu Wei, master of the sheng. The range of colours that Wei can coax from his instrument is remarkable, as is the sonic blending of sheng, viola and double bass in this Chinese-German-Finnish trio. Bassist Janne Saksala, who like Stegner, is also a member of the Berlin Philharmonic, shares the violist’s sense of improvisational curiosity. Here the trio plays Claude Monteverdi’s Si dolce è’l tormento and Pur ti miro from L’incoronazione di Poppea, J. S. Bach’s organ trio sonatas Nos 1 and 4, and Antonio Vivaldi’s D minor Trio Sonata, in a programme completed by “Buremarsj frå Beiarn”, a bridal march from Norwegian folk tradition. “Over time our programme kept growing, even though it’s a challenge to arrange works for this unusual combination of sounds. We don’t aim to interpret early music in a strictly historically correct way. All of us come from different musical and cultural backgrounds and it is precisely this diversity that consciously flows into our interpretations.” The players “explore the freedom the music offers. With respect, but also with a desire for discovery”.

The sheng, whose history goes back three thousand years, is a free reed polyphonic instrument, with vertical bamboo pipes cased in a metal bowl. Its sound has been likened to the singing phoenix of Chinese legend, “silvery and fleeting as the wind.” Wu Wei plays a custom developed sheng with a key mechanism that gives him full access also to the Western tonal system.

Born in Gaoyou in China’s Jiangsu province, Wu Wei studied the sheng at the Shanghai Conservatory and came to Germany on a DAAD scholarship in 1995, and has been based in Berlin since then, establishing a reputation as a soloist not limited by idiomatic constraints, playing in contexts from Chinese traditional repertoire to European baroque and classical music, contemporary composition, jazz, electronic music and free improvisation. A number of composers have written music for him, among them Unsuk Chin, Jukka Tiensuu and Guus Jansen, and he has worked with new music groups including Ensemble Modern and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, jazz groups including the NDR Big Band, and orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Seoul Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony. Wu Wei was last heard on ECM in 2021 as a member of the multicultural collective led by singer Cymin Samawatie and drummer Ketan Bhatti, the Trickster Orchestra.

Martin Stegner studied violin at the Mannheim University of Music, before switching to viola, with a stipendium from the Karajan Academy. His first professional engagement was as principal viola with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. In 1996 he joined the Berlin Philharmonic. As soloist and chamber musician his repertoire extends from Bach to Piazzolla and beyond. In parallel with classical activities he has long been a committed improviser, and in 2008 co-founded the Berlin Philharmonic Jazz Group. In 2014 he made his first appearance on ECM, playing on the album Phoenix by the Berlin based band Cyminology, with whom he has also toured. Like Wu Wei he also appears on the debut album of the Trickster Orchestra. Other affiliations have included work with Markus Stockhausen.

Janne Saksala is first principal bass of the Berlin Philharmonic, a position he has held since 2008. He began studying the instrument in his hometown of Helsinki at the age of 14, and continued at Berlin’s Hochschule der Künste from 1986. In 1991 he was a prizewinner at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich. A busy career as chamber musician and soloist has brought him together with artists such as Tabea Zimmermann, Isabelle Faust, Leonidas Kavakos, Leif Ove Andsnes, Pekka Kuusito and Guy Braunstein. Passionate also about teaching the bass to the next generation of players, Saksala has been a mentor for many musicians. In 2023 he took up a position as double bass professor at Berlin’s Universität der Künste and is a guest lecturer at numerous universities around the world.

Pur ti Miro was recorded at Teldex Studios, Berlin, in October 2022.

Wu Wei, sheng
Martin Stegner, viola
Janne Saksala, double bass

Wu Wei
The artistry of internationally, renowned Sheng virtuoso Wu Wei reaches far beyond the traditional boundaries of his more than 3000-year-old Chinese instrument and brings it well into the 21st century.

The Sheng, a mouth organ, formed out of a bundle of bamboo reeds and cased in a metal bowl, sounds as the singing phoenix from a Chinese legend: silvery and fleeting as the wind.

Wu Wei’s radiant and transparent tone as well as the infinite possibilities offered by his instrument in terms of melody, harmony, rhythm, polyphony have led him to collaborating with many artists and ensembles in traditional, chamber or orchestral settings, improvising in solo concerts or with jazz big Bands, playing electronic music as well as taking part to minimal, baroque music performances.

Wu Wei’s desire to experiment with new sound and types of musical expression and his extraordinary capacity to create an individual world out of each performance are reflected in his collaborations with distinguished composers writing concertos for Sheng and orchestra especially for him: Huang Ruo (The color of yellow – 2007), Guus Janssen (Four Songs – 2008), Unsuk Chin (Su – 2009), Jukka Tiensuu (Teoton – 2015), Bernd Richard Deutsch (Phaenomena – 2019), Ondrej Adamek (Lost Prayer Book – 2019), Donghong Shin (Anecdote – 2019), Enjott Schneider (change – 2003 and several other concerti).

In the last decade, Wu Wei has performed with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic under Kent Nagano, the Seoul Philharmonic under Myung Whun Chung, the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel, BBC Symphony under Ilan Volkov, the Cabrillo Festival and Sao Paulo Symphony under Marin Alsop, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic under Susanna Mälkki, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden and Edo de Waart, Helsinki Philharmonic under Matthias Pintscher, ensembles such as the Holland Baroque, the Ensemble intercontemporain, the Atlas Ensemble and the NDR Big Band, and soloists like Guus Jansen (organ), Wang Li (Jew’s harp) or Pascal Contet (accordion).

He is regularly invited by international festivals such as the BBC Prom’s in London, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Edinburgh International Festival, Suntory Hall Summer Festival Tokyo, Dresdner Musikfestspiele, Festival Achtbrücken Cologne, Grafenegg Festival, Lincoln Center Festival New York…

Upcoming events include Wu Wei’s debuts with the New York Philharmonic and Sao Paulo Symphony orchestra in 2019, the Chinese premiere in Beijing of Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Sheng concerto Phaenomena with the China NCPA Orchestra under Jia Lü, the world premiere of a new Sheng concerto by Enjott Schneider with the Taipei Chinese Orchestra and a tour to America and Canada with the Chinese NCPA Orchestra in 2020.

As a composer, Wu Wei has received commissions from the Fondation Royaumont, Musica Viva in Munich, the Hanse Culture Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony and several other institutions.

With Martin Stegner (viola) und Matthew McDonald (double bass), both members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, he founded the Wu Wei Trio which appears each season in the Chamber Music Hall of the Berlin Philharmonie. As a founder of the Berlin based Ensemble Asianart, he likes to share transcultural programs with instrumentalists from all around the world. He is an ideal partner for interdisciplinary projects involving literature, dance, theatre, architecture….

Wu Wei has recorded for Deutsche Gramophon, Sony Classical, Harmonia Mundi, Wergo, Pentatone and several of his CDs and DVDs have been distinguished by international Awards: International Classical Music Award 2015 and BBC Music Magazine Award 2015 for the Unsuk Chin concertos CD with Deutsche Gramophon, the German Critic Award in 2012 for the “AsianArt Ensemble” CD to note a few.

He also received the Best Sheng Soloist Award China in 2017, the Herald Angels Award 2011 at the International Festival Edinburgh, the Global Root German World Music Prize 2004 in Rudolstadt (Germany).

Wu Wei was born in 1970 in Gaoyou (China). He studied at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and started his career in 1993 as a Sheng soloist in China where he performed among others with the Chinese Music Orchestra Shanghaï. In 1995, he was selected by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and FNS (Friedrich Naumann Foundation) to take part in a four-year scholarship which brought him to Berlin, where he is still currently living. Since 2013, Wu Wei has been a Professor teaching the Sheng at the Shanghaï Conservatory of Music.

Martin Stegner
is undoubtedly one of Germany's most interesting violists.

After initial violin lessons with his father, he continued his studies at the Mannheim University of Music with Roman Nodel and later switched to the viola. He was a scholarship recipient of the Karajan Academy, and his first engagement was as principal violist of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in 1993. Three years later, he joined the Berlin Philharmonic.

He performs as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe, America, and Japan. He teaches for the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and the Orquesta Juvenil Centroamericana and gives courses at institutions including Yale University and the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. He has led numerous creative projects within the framework of the Berlin Philharmonic's Education Program.

His repertoire encompasses music from Bach to Piazzolla, but he has a particular passion for song arrangements, and several highly acclaimed CDs of Robert Schumann's song cycles have been released.

Since his youth, he has been a passionate improviser, performing at numerous festivals and playing with artists such as Herbie Mann, Diane Reeves, Nils Landgren, and Michael Wollny. In 2023, he and the Trickster Orchestra received the German Jazz Prize.

He co-founded the Berlin Philharmonic Jazz Group and established the Ensemble Bolero Berlin in 2008. Albums with the German/Persian singer Cymin Samawatie were released on ECM in 2015 and 2021.

Since his youth, he has been a passionate improviser, performing at numerous festivals and playing with artists such as Herbie Mann, Diane Reeves, Nils Landgren, and Michael Wollny.

Martin Stegner has also collaborated on projects with artists such as Markus Stockhausen, the Chinese sheng virtuoso WuWei, and the Norwegian string trio "Northern String Trio."

His work is documented on 22 CDs to date.

Janne Saksala
When a local youth orchestra was one double-bass short, his teacher asked Janne Saksala, who already played the piano and electric bass, if he wanted to take a crack at the instrument. He said yes immediately and with great enthusiasm. In 1981 he began double-bass studies with Jiri Paevianen at the music scholl of his native Helsinki, continuin form 1986 with Klaus Stoll at the Berlin Hochschule der Künste.

Other major influences include Duncan McTier, Frantisek Posta and Ilan Gronich. In 1991 he was a prizewinner at the ARD Interntaional Music Competition in Munich. Two year later, Saksala became a member of the Berliner Philharmoniker, where he has since 2008 been engaged as first principle solo double bassist.

A passionate chamber musician, hi performing partners have included, amongst others, Olli Mustonen, Isabelle Faust, Guy Braunstein, Igor Levit, Leif Ove Andsnes, Jan Vogler and Tabia Zimmermann.

Saksala plays regularly with the Stradivari soloists o the Berliner Philharmoniker and is a founding member of the Berlin Philharmonic Jazz Group and the Oriol Ensemble.

In addition to performing, he is an equally passionate teacher. He holds an annual masterclass at the Carl Flesch Academy in Baden-Baden, has been a visiting professor at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin, and has been guest lecturer at several universities in America, Europe and Asia. Recently, Saksala has also been interested in composition. In 2017 he wrote his first piece «Rituaali for Cello and Double Bass».

Booklet for Pur ti miro