Biber | Bartók | Berio | Bach by Liza Ferschtman

Liza Ferschtman

Biber | Bartók | Berio | Bach

Format: SACD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917263527
Catnr: CC 72635
Release date: 07 April 2014

Hi-res download at Spirit of Turtle

1 SACD
		Hi-res download at Spirit of Turtle

Label
Challenge Classics

UPC
0608917263527

Catalogue number
CC 72635

Release date
07 April 2014

""Then I got the invitation to fill five concerts in the line Zielsverwanten. Enormous luxury!""

Het Parool, 01-10-2016

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

Press

About the album

"This is an invitation: an invitation to join me in an adventure. It would normally take place in the concert hall, because the combination of pieces I’m presenting to you here is not a typical programme for a CD. It’s an overwhelming recital that demands a great deal not only from me as the musician, but also from you as the audience. When I play this recital in a concert setting, which I’ve done on many occasions, I always find it to be a battle, where I’m reaching for my own limits and for the audience’s limits. But this is a constructive battle. The battle is the pathway and at the end of it we’re in a better place. From the stage, I can take the audience by the hand as stunning beauty alternates with uncomfortable and what can even be almost ugly sounds.

These are exactly the pieces I wanted to record. This is a highly personal program. It’s a program of contradictions: the ostensible simplicity of Biber and Bach contrasting with the complexity of Bartók and Berio. It’s emotional but at the same time highly cerebral.

Bach’s Chaconne is the focal point, to which the works of Bartok and Berio make strong references , making it the core of this programme. Biber’s Passacaglia provides focus, with its persistent repeated cadence of the four falling notes. This pulse underpins the entire recital: sometimes hidden and barely audible, like a sort of primeval pulse (as in the Berio), and sometimes quite clear. Bartók’s Sonata is a real masterpiece, It’s the pinnacle of what is possible on the violin, without having virtuosity as its objective. The consonance – or actually the battle – between two notes lies at the heart of Berio’s Sequenza VIII. This also presents us with a degree of ugliness. But after the powerful confrontations, as the music gradually subsides in volume these two notes end up forming a brotherly union. The battle has led to some good after all."
Liza Ferschtman

Beroemde Nederlandse violiste met een persoonlijk programma
Dit album is een uitnodiging om met Liza Ferschtman op avontuur te gaan. Normaal gesproken vindt dit avontuur plaats in de concertzaal, omdat deze combinatie van werken geen typisch programma voor een album vormt. Het is een overweldigende uitvoering die voor zowel de musicus als het publiek veeleisend is. Ferschtman schreef over dit albumL "als ik dit programma speel tijdens een concert, wat ik vaak gedaan heb, is het net een gevecht waarin ik mijn eigen grenzen en die van het publiek bereik. Maar dit is een constructief gevecht. Het gevecht vormt de weg en aan het einde daarvan wordt een betere plek bereikt. Vanaf het podium neem ik het publiek bij de hand, wanneer ongelooflijke schoonheid wordt afgewisseld met onaangename en haast lelijke klanken."

Dit waren precies de stukken die Ferschtman wilde opnemen. Het is een persoonlijk programma en het is een programma van tegenstellingen: de ogenschijnlijk eenvoudige muziek van Biber en Bach contrasteert met de complexiteit van Bartók en Berio. Het is emotioneel en rationeel tegelijkertijd.

Liza Ferschtman wordt beschouwd als een van de meest interessante musici van deze tijd. Ze raakt het publiek met haar gepassioneerde spel en haar charismatische uitstraling op het podium. Over dit album is een documentaire gemaakt, die op de Nederlandse televisie is uitgezonden.

Die niederländische Geigerin mit einem anspruchsvollen Rezital.

Liza Ferschtman, Geigerin mit russischen Eltern, lebt ihre Liebe zur Musik. Für sie ist die Begrenzung auf ein Instrument oder eine Stilrichtung fremd. Jedoch hat sie mit der Geige den Weg gefunden, sich in der Musik auszudrücken. Das Programm ihrer neuesten CD beschreibt sie selber als „Programm der Gegensätze“. Die Scheinbare Klarheit der Werke von Bach und Biber stehen im Kontrast zu den komplexen Kompositionen von Bartok und Berio. Trotzdem sind alle Werke von großer Emotionalität.

Liza Ferschtman spielte dieses anspruchsvolle Programm in zahlreichen Konzerten. Es gelang ihr, das Publikum zu fesseln und zu begeistern.

Artist(s)

Liza Ferschtman

Dutch violinist Liza Ferschtman is known for her passionate performances, interesting programs and communicative qualities on stage. She is equally at home on the concert stage with concertos, chamber music, recitals and solo works. In 2006 she received the highest accolade awarded to a musician in the Netherlands, the Dutch Music Prize.
Born into a family of Russian musicians, Liza Ferschtman was constantly surrounded by music.
One of her earliest major influences was the violinist Philipp Hirschhorn, a close family friend. She received her formal training from Herman Krebbers at the Amsterdam Conservatory, Ida Kavafian at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and David Takeno in London.
In recent years Liza Ferschtman has performed with all significant Dutch Orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw and the Rotterdam Philhamonic. She has been soloist of the Orchestre National de Belgique, European Union Youth Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Orchestra, Malaysian Philharmonic, Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, Bremen Philharmonic, Radio Symphony Orchestra of Prague, Malmö Symphony, and Bergen Philharmonic. Conductors she has worked with include Stephan Blunier, Frans Bruggen, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Claus Peter Flor, Neeme Järvi, Yakov Kreizberg, Zdenek Macal, Jun Maerkl, Gianandrea Noseda, Marc Soustrot, Leonard Slatkin, Thomas Sondergard, Karl-Heinz Steffens, Mario Venzago and Jaap van Zweden.
An avid chamber musician, Ms. Ferschtman has collaborated regularly with artists such as Inon Barnatan, Jonathan Biss, Nobuko Imai, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Enrico Pace, Christian Poltera, Lars Anders Tomter and Alisa Weilerstein. In addition to appearances at numerous international Chamber Music festivals, she has performed at venues such as the Alice Tully Hall in New York, the Library of Congress in Washington, Wigmore Hall in London, the Brahms Saal at the Vienna Musikverein, as well the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
Liza Ferschtman has been the artistic director of the Delft Chamber Music Festival since 2007, one of the reputable festivals in Europe. During her tenure the festival has become widely known for adventurous programming with dynamic performances by artists from around the globe.
Highlights in the past season were the performance of the complete solo works by Bach in Amsterdam and a concert tour to Budapest, Amsterdam, New York and Montréal with the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Playing under the baton of Iván Fischer, Ms. Ferschtman received outstanding reviews for her rendition of Bernstein's "Serenade" with this orchestra.
During the current season Liza Ferschtman is scheduled to make her debuts with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Essen, the Staatskapelle Weimar and the Flanders Symphony Orchestra. She will perform chamber music at the Liederhalle in Stuttgart and the Beethoven Haus in Bonn and will be present in the Netherlands with several recitals.
Ms. Ferschtman's recording of the Beethoven Concerto and Romances was received with great critical acclaim, as well as her other recordings with concertos by Dvorak, Röntgen, solo works by Bach and Ysaye, (STRAD CD choice of the month), and duo works by Beethoven and Schubert. Her next CD will be solo works by Bach, Biber, Bartok and Berio (Challenge Classics).

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Composer(s)

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He enriched established German styles through his skill in counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organisation, and the adaptation of rhythms, forms, and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France. Bach's compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor, two Passions, and hundreds of cantatas. His music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth. Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest in and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.

Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest in and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.

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Béla Bartók

Next to Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók was a third seminal innovator of European art music at the start of the twentieth century. Bartók, too, sought a way out of the deadlock of tonal music around 1900, and he found it in folk music. Initially, he tied in with the nationalistic tradition of Franz Liszt with his tone poem Kossuth, but eventually he found his own voice with the rediscovery of the music of Hungarian peasants. Together with Zoltán Kodály he was one of the first to apply the results of folkloric research into his own compositions. One major difference between him and composers of the 19th century, was that Bartók did not adjust to the system of tonality, but created his own musical idiom from folk music. Because of this, his composition style was flexible to other musical trends, without having to violate his own view points. For example, his two Violin sonates come close to Schoenberg's free expressionism, and after 1926 his music started to show neoclassicistic tendencies, comparable to Stravinsky's music. Bartók was not just interested in Hungarian folk music, but could appreciate musical folklore from all of the Balkan, Turkey and North-Africa as well.

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Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber

Franz von Biber, he might as well be called 'the Jimi Hendrix of the 17th century'. His virtuosity on violin was unprecedented, and he combined this with a passion for experimentation which is just as remarkable. With his violin skills, Biber's social status quickly improved. After working as the 'musician in residence' for the bishop of Olmütz, he consecutively worked for the archbishop of Salzburg and, as a kapellmeister, for Emperor Leopold I. Biber was a religious man, and it can't be a coincidence both his daughters (he also had two sons) lived in a monastery. Biber composed both instrumental als vocal music. The pinnacles of his body of works are undoubtedly his Rosary Sonatas and his Missa Salisburgensis. The former shows Biber's virtuosity...

Franz von Biber, he might as well be called 'the Jimi Hendrix of the 17th century'. His virtuosity on violin was unprecedented, and he combined this with a passion for experimentation which is just as remarkable. With his violin skills, Biber's social status quickly improved. After working as the 'musician in residence' for the bishop of Olmütz, he consecutively worked for the archbishop of Salzburg and, as a kapellmeister, for Emperor Leopold I. Biber was a religious man, and it can't be a coincidence both his daughters (he also had two sons) lived in a monastery. Biber composed both instrumental als vocal music. The pinnacles of his body of works are undoubtedly his Rosary Sonatas and his Missa Salisburgensis. The former shows Biber's virtuosity as a compositional art; the latter shows, with its enourmous instrumentation, the capabilities of Biber as a grandiose composer.

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Luciano Berio

Luciano Berio was an Italian compser. From 1950 to 1964 he was married to the American soprano Cathy Berberian, for whom he composed several works, among which his Circles, Sequenza III, Visage and Récital. Together with Bruno Maderna he founded the Studio di Fonologia, an experimental orchestra. Later, he became a teacher at the renowned Julliard School in New York. His body of works cover a wide range of forms experiments. Hij wrote both chamber music and orchestral works, and electronic music. For his whole life he worked on a set Sequenze for solo instruments. His use of musical and literature citations and his incorporations of all kinds of folk music is characteristic of his work. Some of the authors he used to cite a lot...

Luciano Berio was an Italian compser. From 1950 to 1964 he was married to the American soprano Cathy Berberian, for whom he composed several works, among which his Circles, Sequenza III, Visage and Récital.
Together with Bruno Maderna he founded the Studio di Fonologia, an experimental orchestra. Later, he became a teacher at the renowned Julliard School in New York. His body of works cover a wide range of forms experiments. Hij wrote both chamber music and orchestral works, and electronic music. For his whole life he worked on a set Sequenze for solo instruments. His use of musical and literature citations and his incorporations of all kinds of folk music is characteristic of his work. Some of the authors he used to cite a lot are James Joyce, Edoardo Sanguineti, e.e.cummings, Italo Calvino, Samuel Beckett and Claude Lévi-Strauss.

He became popular with his 1964 Folk Songs and his Sinfonia composed for the Swingle Singers from 1968. Berio also orchestrated music by other composers. Rendering, for instance, is his orchestration and completion of sketches of an unfinished symphony by Franz Schubert.

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Press

"Then I got the invitation to fill five concerts in the line Zielsverwanten. Enormous luxury!"
Het Parool, 01-10-2016

["].. With Liza Ferschtman it's a balanced programme that places Baroque music alongside 20th-century works; for Tamsin Waley-Cohen it's the starting point for a survey of more recent solo violin music." " [...]Ferschtman's finely expressinve phrasing"
Gramophone, 01-7-2015

"Four solo works for soloists, which Liza Ferschtman demonstrates that she is one of the best violinists of today"
Mania, 08-8-2014

She finds sounds and interpretative insights so contrasting across her four stratlingly diverse pieces that you'd swear she wasn't alone. It's a remarable disc, profound in its insights and searing in its sincerity.
AMATI.com, 04-8-2014

"It's a remarkable disc, profound in its insights and searing its sincerity."
Amati.com, 04-8-2014

I have no hesitation - the former is absolutely amazing fiddeling!
Early Music Review, 01-8-2014

This bold, ingenious set, juxtaposing works by two giants of the high baroque with two giants of the 20th century, reveals a plyer of deep insight, intesity and imagination.
Sunday Times, 20-7-2014

Four solo works for soloists, where Liza Ferschtman demonstrates that she is one of the best violinists of today.
Platomania, 29-5-2014

As a complete recital this album convinces because Ferschtman is placing these four B's under an overarching tensioncurve. Violinist Tunisian sovereignty summit. Violinist sovereignty all over
De Telegraaf, 13-5-2014

An impressive recital in which four works from the literature for solo violin come alive
Opus Klassiek, 01-5-2014

No quote
Musicalifeiten, 18-4-2014

"The CD provides a versatile and complete picture of Ferschtman; she combines strength of feeling and technical perfection of musical intensity"
Luister

"The former is absolutely amazing fiddling!"
Early Music Review