Violin Concerto (vinyl) by Antje Weithaas

Johannes Brahms

Antje Weithaas

Violin Concerto (vinyl)

Format: LP 12inch
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085533435
Catnr: AVI 8553343
Release date: 12 February 2016
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1 LP 12inch		Notify when available

Label
CAvi

UPC
4260085533435

Catalogue number
AVI 8553343

Release date
12 February 2016

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Soloist and leader of the Camerata Bern, Antje Weithaas - 'For any violinist, the Brahms Concerto is a special challenge and a precious gem, a piece one works on for decades. I studied it more intensely for the first time when I was 18-19; now I'm astounded to note how one's perception of such a work can change so radically. Amongst all violin concertos, Brahms, Beethoven and Mendelssohn play an essential role, and I would add Britten and Shostakovich. The Brahms Violin Concerto is part of our essential repertoire, and was composed at a time when the 'customary' violin concerto no longer had any significance as virtuoso display for a soloist (incidentally, that's my own credo as a performer). This is a symphonic work, an aspect that relates it to the recording of Berg and Beethoven I made with Stavanger Symphony Orchestra a couple of years ago. Those two pieces from different stylistic periods are actually works for orchestra with obligato solo violin - and the same applies to the Brahms Concerto. The violin often plays passagework around the orchestra melody, as in the Beethoven Concerto, which is why I find the symphonic approach so important here as well...We tackled the challenge of performing and recording without a conductor. Of course, when I otherwise perform this concerto with a conductor, I intensely learn and think through the orchestra part in my head. It is a challenge I am aware of, and I thus probably would never have had dared to perform this concerto without a conductor. But since I've often performed the Beethoven Concerto with the Camerata Bern without a conductor, I started thinking that the Brahms Concerto just might work as well. Over teh past 7-9 years we have become so well-acquainted with one another on a musical and personal level that by now we manage to communicate with blindfolds on. I probably would not have dared to embark on this adventure with any other ensemble. The most important thing is that each musician should remain in a 'chamber music' attitude while providing the necessary symphonic energy and assuming his/her share of responsibility.

Artist(s)

Antje Weithaas (violin)

Brimming with energy, Antje Weithaas brings her compelling musical intelligence and technical mastery to every detail in the score. Her charisma and stage presence are captivating, but never overshadow the works themselves. Her wide-ranging repertoire encompasses a large portion of major concerto and chamber music works from the Baroque age to the present day. As a soloist, she has made appearances with a great number of orchestras in Europe and around the globe, collaborating with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Dmitri Kitayenko, Sir Neville Marriner, Marc Albrecht, Yakov Kreizberg, Sakari Oramo, and Carlos Kalmar. With her infectious zest for communication, Antje Weithaas has become a sought-after leader in “Play-Conduct concerts” with internationally renowned chamber orchestras. She was Artistic Director of the Camerata Bern for almost ten years and still...

Brimming with energy, Antje Weithaas brings her compelling musical intelligence and technical mastery to every detail in the score. Her charisma and stage presence are captivating, but never overshadow the works themselves. Her wide-ranging repertoire encompasses a large portion of major concerto and chamber music works from the Baroque age to the present day.
As a soloist, she has made appearances with a great number of orchestras in Europe and around the globe, collaborating with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Dmitri Kitayenko, Sir Neville Marriner, Marc Albrecht, Yakov Kreizberg, Sakari Oramo, and Carlos Kalmar.
With her infectious zest for communication, Antje Weithaas has become a sought-after leader in “Play-Conduct concerts” with internationally renowned chamber orchestras. She was Artistic Director of the Camerata Bern for almost ten years and still returns to work with them on a regular basis.
Her concerts as Associated Artist of the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris in the 2021/22 season led to an immediate re-invitation.
Weithaas’s recordings include the solo sonatas of Bach and Ysaÿe, the Ligeti horn trio, Beethoven quartets, Schubert trios, and the violin concertos of Beethoven, Schumann, Berg, and Khachaturian.
More than anything else, Antje Weihaas is a chamber music musician par excellence and is playing with many high qualified partners.
She won the Kreisler Competition in Graz in 1987 and the Bach Competition in Leipzig in 1988, as well as the renowned Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition Hanover in 1991. Together with Oliver Wille, she recently assumed the artistic directorship of the Joachim competition.
After teaching at the Berlin University of the Arts, Antje Weithaas was appointed to a chair at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in 2004, where she has acquired a pre-eminent worldwide reputation as a violin teacher. She plays on a 2001 Peter Greiner violin. www.antje-weithaas.de

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Camerata Bern

Founded in 1962 as a flexible instrumental ensemble without a conductor, the CAMERATA BERN quickly rose to international success. Its members are highly gifted soloists and chamber musicians. Under the artistic direction of Antje Weithaas and guest concertmasters such as Erich Hörbarth, Patricia Kopatschinskaja, Amandine Beyer, Rachel Podger and Enrico Onofri, the ensemble stands out with its subtle and perfectly homogeneous sound, its freshness and mastery of style. The CAMERATA BERN now extends its focus to historically informed peformance on period instruments, while maintaining a lively, fruitful dialogue with the music of our time. These exceptional qualities have led the ensemble to collaborate with a great number of internationally renowned soloists such as Heinz Holliger, András Schiff, Alexander Lonquich, Jörg Widmann,...

Founded in 1962 as a flexible instrumental ensemble without a conductor, the CAMERATA BERN quickly rose to international success. Its members are highly gifted soloists and chamber musicians. Under the artistic direction of Antje Weithaas and guest concertmasters such as Erich Hörbarth, Patricia Kopatschinskaja, Amandine Beyer, Rachel Podger and Enrico Onofri, the ensemble stands out with its subtle and perfectly homogeneous sound, its freshness and mastery of style. The CAMERATA BERN now extends its focus to historically informed peformance on period instruments, while maintaining a lively, fruitful dialogue with the music of our time.
These exceptional qualities have led the ensemble to collaborate with a great number of internationally renowned soloists such as Heinz Holliger, András Schiff, Alexander Lonquich, Jörg Widmann, Tabea Zimmermann, Bernd Glemser, Christian Gerhaher, Marie Luise Neunecker, Vesselina Kasarova, Radu Lupu, Gidon Kremer, Barbara Hendricks, Reinhold Friedrich, Leonidas Kavakos and Angelika Kirchschlager, amongst others.

The ensemble has toured extensively in Europe, South and North America, as well as in South Asia, the Far East, Australia and Japan, recently to Mexico, Costa Rica, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Montevideo, Geneva, Genua and others. Its recordings have won several international awards. In 2012, the CAvi-Music label released a CAMERATA BERN Beethoven CD as well as the Brahms Violin Concerto (2015) with Antje Weithaas.

The CAMERATA BERN hosts its own subscription concert cycles in Berne. It brings music closer to children thanks to a large-scale project initiated in 2010, with over 130 concerts in schools across the Canton of Bern. In collaboration with Bern Municipal Theatre, the CAMEARATA co-produces full-length choreographies and opera. In early 2015, the ensemble co-produced Monteverdi’s opera “L’Orfeo” with Konzert Theater Berne very successfully conducted by Attilio Cremonesi.

The CAMERATA BERN FOUNDATION receives subsidies from the City, the Burgergemeinde and the Canton of Berne. It also receives regular support endowments from the Ursula Wirz Foundation and project-related funding from a series from further foundations and sponsors. In its programmes dedicated to early music, the ensemble performs on a set of 14 period instruments based on Baroque models, donated by the Bernese Guilds, the Burgergemeinde of Berne and and the Hans & Verena Krebs Foundation.

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Silke Avenhaus (piano)

Sensitivity, creativity, profound emotion, a sense of structure, and the joy of discovery: these are the traits singled out by music critics in praise of pianist Silke Avenhaus for her international concert appearances and over 30 CD productions in which she has participated. She is regularly invited to appear at the most important European music festivals including Salzburg, Lucerne, Schleswig-Holstein, Rheingau, the Ruhr Piano Festival, and the Pablo Casals Festival, as well as the Marlboro Music Festival (USA). In chamber music she has partnered with an outstanding roster of European colleagues. Born in Karlsruhe, she studied with professors Bianca Bodalia and Klaus Schilde (Munich), György Sebök (Indiana), Sandor Végh, and András Schiff. She has been appointed Honorary Professor at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, and is engaged...

Sensitivity, creativity, profound emotion, a sense of structure, and the joy of discovery: these are the traits singled out by music critics in praise of pianist Silke Avenhaus for her international concert appearances and over 30 CD productions in which she has participated. She is regularly invited to appear at the most important European music festivals including Salzburg, Lucerne, Schleswig-Holstein, Rheingau, the Ruhr Piano Festival, and the Pablo Casals Festival, as well as the Marlboro Music Festival (USA). In chamber music she has partnered with an outstanding roster of European colleagues.
Born in Karlsruhe, she studied with professors Bianca Bodalia and Klaus Schilde (Munich), György Sebök (Indiana), Sandor Végh, and András Schiff. She has been appointed Honorary Professor at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, and is engaged in projects including Rhapsody in School, Sounds and Science (a series of which she is co-founder, held at Vienna Konzerthaus), and Artists for a Better Future (a circle of artists who support social projects worldwide).

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Composer(s)

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer is such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.
Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, and voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished.
Brahms has been considered, by his contemporaries and by later writers, as both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Within his meticulous structures is embedded, however, a highly romantic nature.

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