1 CD |
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Label Challenge Classics |
UPC 0608917203127 |
Catalogue number CC 72031 |
Release date 01 January 1997 |
Steck began studying the modern violin with Jörg-Wolfgang Jahn in Karlsruhe and the baroque violin with Reinhard Goebel in Cologne. After his studies he served as concertmaster for Musica Antiqua Köln and the French ensemble Les Musiciens du Louvre under Marc Minkowski. With these ensembles he gave concerts worldwide and has participated in more than thirty album recordings. In 1996 he co-founded the Schuppanzigh Quartet, where he was first violinist. From 2005 to 2008 he was concertmaster of Concerto Köln. In 1997 he made his conducting début with the Handel Festival Orchestra Halle, where he has been artistic director since 1999.
His repertoire ranges from early Baroque to the sonatas and violin concertos of Louis Spohr. The recording of the Sonatas KV 55-60 by Mozart and sonatas by Johann Georg Pisendel been awarded several international record prizes.
Steck, since 2000, is professor of baroque violin and conductor of the Baroque Orchestra of the National Academy of Music Trossingen. He is married to Marieke Spaans who also teaches at the Musikhochschule Trossingen.
Steck plays a Jakob Stainer violin from 1658 and a Alessandro Gagliono from 1701. In 2011, Steck was a judge at the MAFestival in Bruges.
Albinoni studied violin and voice, but in the art of composing he was completely self-taught. He was born to a rich family, and he didn't have to work for the church (unlike his contemporaries such as Vivaldi, Zani and Geminiani), which gave him a lot of time and finances to work on his compositions from an early age. His first opera Zenobia, regina de Palmireni was performed in Venice for the first time in 1694. Even though he quickly grew to fame as a composer, little is known of Albinoni's life. He married in 1705, and the Kapellmeister of the St Mark's Basilica, his friend Antonio Biffi, was his best man at the wedding. Otherwise it seems he had little contact with the musical establishment of Venice, even though his operas were quite popular in the Italian cities. In 1722, Maximilian II of Bavaria invitied him to perform two of his operas in Munich. Around 1740, a collection of violin sonatas by Albinoni was published posthumously by a French editor. For a long time, people thought he had already died by then, but in reality he was living a secluded life in Venice, where he died at the age of 80 from diabetes.