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Violent Viola

Esther Apituley

Violent Viola

Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917215625
Catnr: CC 72156
Release date: 26 December 2012
1 CD
 
Label
Challenge Classics
UPC
0608917215625
Catalogue number
CC 72156
Release date
26 December 2012
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN
NL

About the album

I wrestle with my viola as if it was my life.
It is true that the viola chose me. Not the other way round.
And over time we have built up a history together. Played nearly all over the world and in the crazi- est places, on the roof of a supermarket, in the air over a desert, and in a lavatory... And so we have become so entwined with each other that you’d need a saw to separate us. What drives my life, what sometimes becomes a battle, also drives my music, and so that too leads to conflict. To con- quer that inexpressible something, to approach the essence, to create musical moments... which are indescribable. It is almost addictive, or maybe it is also a kind of mission, to want to experience those moments again and again, and share them with an audience.

I have a positive attitude. If something goes wrong, I think that it must be for a reason.
And often it’s true: the grief that filled me when my father died could change to joy because I real- ized that he had taken everything he could take from life. A man of tremendous mental strength, that is what he was. He could take pleasure in the briefest moments of existence, even just before he died and could no longer drink on his own. When he took a straw in his mouth, he bit on it or blew into it. When he finally felt a little moisture on his lips, I saw his eyes sparkle. He sighed then, and said: “ how wonderful...”, squeezed my hand, and looked at me with his little dark eyes, totally happy.
Esther Apituley
De altviool in al haar schoonheid
Over haar relatie met haar instrument schreef Esther Apituley: "zoals ik met het leven vecht, zo vecht ik met mijn altviool. Het is een feit dat de altviool mij heeft uitgekozen. Niet andersom. En wij hebben inmiddels een geschiedenis samen. Bijna over de hele wereld gespeeld en op de gekste plekken, op het dak van een supermarkt, in de lucht boven de woestijn, en in een wc... Wij zijn zo met elkaar verstrengeld dat er een zaag aan te pas moet komen om ons te scheiden." Wat Apituley drijft in het leven, wat soms de vorm aanneemt van een gevecht, drijft haar tevens in de muziek en leidt dus ook daar naar strijd. Om dat onbenoembare te veroveren, om de essentie te benaderen, om muzikale momenten te creëren die onbeschrijflijk zijn. Het lijkt af en toe wel op een verslaving, of misschien is het ook wel een missie, om die momenten steeds opnieuw te willen beleven en te delen met een publiek.

Esther Apituley probeert al jaren om de altviool onder de aandacht te brengen. Ze presenteert het instrument in programma’s en projecten die zich kenmerken door originaliteit, veelzijdigheid en toegankelijkheid. Haar stijl is vrij en onorthodox, overstijgt de traditionele stijl en is niet gebonden aan een bepaald genre. Apituley heeft eigenlijk maar één doel: de altviool presenteren in al haar schoonheid, en het demonstreren van de mogelijkheden en de emotionele reikwijdte van het instrument.

Artist(s)

Esther Apituley

Esther Apituley was born in Amsterdam. She started playing the violin at the age of twelve and quickly moved on to the viola. She graduated from the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, having been taught by Mischa Geller, and went on to study with Bruno Giuranna at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. Esther Apituley was one of the instigators behind the Microkosmos project, to music by Béla Bartòk, a performance with visual elements by Jeroen Henneman. The NPS broadcast Microkosmos as a series. Apituley presented the TV programme ‘Reiziger in Muziek’ (Traveller in music) in 2000. Esther Apituley has appeared as a soloist with ensembles including the Dutch National Ballet Orchestra, North Holland Philharmonic, Metropole Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra. She has...
more

Esther Apituley was born in Amsterdam. She started playing the violin at the age of twelve and quickly moved on to the viola.
She graduated from the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, having been taught by Mischa Geller, and went on to study with Bruno Giuranna at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin.
Esther Apituley was one of the instigators behind the Microkosmos project, to music by Béla Bartòk, a performance with visual elements by Jeroen Henneman. The NPS broadcast Microkosmos as a series.
Apituley presented the TV programme ‘Reiziger in Muziek’ (Traveller in music) in 2000.
Esther Apituley has appeared as a soloist with ensembles including the Dutch National Ballet Orchestra, North Holland Philharmonic, Metropole Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra. She has performed viola concertos by Berlioz, Bartok and Chiel Meijering, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante and Lachrymae by Britten.
Ms. Apituley also makes regular international solo appearances in Japan, Spain, Germany, the Czech Republic and elsewhere. In the summers of 2007 and 2008, she gave concerts and masterclasses at the International Music Festival in Campos do Jordao, Brazil.
Esther Apituley is now well known for her quite unique way of presenting concerts. For instance, her appearances with the Amsterdam Viola Quartet also represent a particular break from tradition. The Quartet’s repertoire is wide-ranging, from baroque through classical to modern and close harmony.
They have now had considerable success at home and abroad, including appearances in Morocco, the Czech Republic, Austria and Cyprus, and a lengthier tour of Indonesia in 2010. The Amsterdam Viola Quartet is also regularly joined by guest artistes, such as the tap dancer Peter Kuit, actor Hans Dagelet, whistler Geert Chatrou or mime artist Rob van Reijn. The Quartet has now given thirty or so concerts with actors Hans Dagelet and Lizzy Timmers, in “De Hydropathen”.
Her first CD, 'Violent Viola', appeared in 2005 and was followed in 2007 by 'Viola Voila', to very warm reviews in all the newspapers. Her third CD, including works by Brahms and Poulenc appeared in 2011.
Esther Apituley was appointed artistic director of the ViolaViola Foundation in 2009. This Foundation is devoted to promoting the viola, and also to encouraging new audiences, partly through the medium of the Viola Festival. After successful runs in 2012 and 2014, the third edition of the festival – entitled Esther Apituley’s Locomotive – will be held in 2016.


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Composer(s)

Esther Apituley

Esther Apituley was born in Amsterdam. She started playing the violin at the age of twelve and quickly moved on to the viola. She graduated from the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, having been taught by Mischa Geller, and went on to study with Bruno Giuranna at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. Esther Apituley was one of the instigators behind the Microkosmos project, to music by Béla Bartòk, a performance with visual elements by Jeroen Henneman. The NPS broadcast Microkosmos as a series. Apituley presented the TV programme ‘Reiziger in Muziek’ (Traveller in music) in 2000. Esther Apituley has appeared as a soloist with ensembles including the Dutch National Ballet Orchestra, North Holland Philharmonic, Metropole Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra. She has...
more

Esther Apituley was born in Amsterdam. She started playing the violin at the age of twelve and quickly moved on to the viola.
She graduated from the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, having been taught by Mischa Geller, and went on to study with Bruno Giuranna at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin.
Esther Apituley was one of the instigators behind the Microkosmos project, to music by Béla Bartòk, a performance with visual elements by Jeroen Henneman. The NPS broadcast Microkosmos as a series.
Apituley presented the TV programme ‘Reiziger in Muziek’ (Traveller in music) in 2000.
Esther Apituley has appeared as a soloist with ensembles including the Dutch National Ballet Orchestra, North Holland Philharmonic, Metropole Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra. She has performed viola concertos by Berlioz, Bartok and Chiel Meijering, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante and Lachrymae by Britten.
Ms. Apituley also makes regular international solo appearances in Japan, Spain, Germany, the Czech Republic and elsewhere. In the summers of 2007 and 2008, she gave concerts and masterclasses at the International Music Festival in Campos do Jordao, Brazil.
Esther Apituley is now well known for her quite unique way of presenting concerts. For instance, her appearances with the Amsterdam Viola Quartet also represent a particular break from tradition. The Quartet’s repertoire is wide-ranging, from baroque through classical to modern and close harmony.
They have now had considerable success at home and abroad, including appearances in Morocco, the Czech Republic, Austria and Cyprus, and a lengthier tour of Indonesia in 2010. The Amsterdam Viola Quartet is also regularly joined by guest artistes, such as the tap dancer Peter Kuit, actor Hans Dagelet, whistler Geert Chatrou or mime artist Rob van Reijn. The Quartet has now given thirty or so concerts with actors Hans Dagelet and Lizzy Timmers, in “De Hydropathen”.
Her first CD, 'Violent Viola', appeared in 2005 and was followed in 2007 by 'Viola Voila', to very warm reviews in all the newspapers. Her third CD, including works by Brahms and Poulenc appeared in 2011.
Esther Apituley was appointed artistic director of the ViolaViola Foundation in 2009. This Foundation is devoted to promoting the viola, and also to encouraging new audiences, partly through the medium of the Viola Festival. After successful runs in 2012 and 2014, the third edition of the festival – entitled Esther Apituley’s Locomotive – will be held in 2016.


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Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten is one most important British composers from the second half of the twentieth century. Remarkably, he focused on opera, a dying genre, at least in its current form. Britten's contributions however, among which Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia, Gloriana, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice, managed to remain core repertoire for opera companies to this day. Many of these productions included a role for his artistic partner and life companion Peter Pears. Britten also wrote a number of lieder for this tenor, among which his Serenade for tenor, horn and string orchestra. Yet, Britten excelled in many more genres. He wasn't even 20 years old when he composed his brilliant Phantasy for hobo quartet and his friendship with...
more

Benjamin Britten is one most important British composers from the second half of the twentieth century. Remarkably, he focused on opera, a dying genre, at least in its current form. Britten's contributions however, among which Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia, Gloriana, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice, managed to remain core repertoire for opera companies to this day. Many of these productions included a role for his artistic partner and life companion Peter Pears. Britten also wrote a number of lieder for this tenor, among which his Serenade for tenor, horn and string orchestra. Yet, Britten excelled in many more genres. He wasn't even 20 years old when he composed his brilliant Phantasy for hobo quartet and his friendship with the legendary cellist Rostropovich led to a Cello sonata, three Suites for cello solo and a Symphony for Cello and orchestra in the 1960s.

Britten never became Master of the Queen's Music, yet he surely had feeling for public sentiments. For example, as a pacifist, he taught his people about world peace through his War Requiem from 1962. Britten was an excellent interpreter of his own work, just like Bartók and Stravinsky. Many of his recordings have been matched, but never exceeded.


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Maurice Ravel

Joseph Maurice Ravel was a French composer who is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer. Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the Conservatoire Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity, incorporating elements of baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, Boléro (1928), in which repetition takes the place of...
more
Joseph Maurice Ravel was a French composer who is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.
Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the Conservatoire Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity, incorporating elements of baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, Boléro (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. He made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known.
As a slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas, and eight song cycles; he wrote no symphonies and only one religious work. Many of his works exist in two versions: a first, piano score and a later orchestration. Some of his piano music, such as Gaspard de la nuit (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as Daphnis et Chloé (1912) require skilful balance in performance.

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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.  
more

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.


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Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith studied violin at the Dr Hoch's Konservatorium of Frankfurt and played from 1915 to 1923 in the Frankfurt opera. From 1921 to 1929 he played viola in the Amar Quarter, where he was advocate for contemporary music. Throughout the years, he held multiple positions as teachers, but he remained most popular as a violist. During the Second Worldwar he fleed to the USA and was given the American nationality in 1948, Later, he returned to Europe to teach at the university of Zürich. His use rhythm, called 'Motorik' by himself (a combination of Motor and Musik) is piercing, and at times even tormenting. It echoes the arrival of industralisation and the motor, as Hindemith opposes any form of sentimentality, psychology...
more

Paul Hindemith studied violin at the Dr Hoch's Konservatorium of Frankfurt and played from 1915 to 1923 in the Frankfurt opera. From 1921 to 1929 he played viola in the Amar Quarter, where he was advocate for contemporary music. Throughout the years, he held multiple positions as teachers, but he remained most popular as a violist. During the Second Worldwar he fleed to the USA and was given the American nationality in 1948, Later, he returned to Europe to teach at the university of Zürich.
His use rhythm, called "Motorik" by himself (a combination of Motor and Musik) is piercing, and at times even tormenting. It echoes the arrival of industralisation and the motor, as Hindemith opposes any form of sentimentality, psychology or personality. This way, Hinemith created shrill, neoclassicistic music (Gebrauchsmusik, music with a social or political aim). His body of works is quite extensive, with more than 100 compositions in all kinds of genres. Even though he was an advocate of contemporary music, he never felt affiliated with dodecaphony. He wrote several theoretic treatises, among which his Unterweisung im Tonsatz from 1937 in which Hindemith offers several systems in which the tension between intervals, harmony and melody is analysed and elevated into a compositional technique.


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Zoltán Kodály

Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, born in 1905. If you would read Kodály's biography, you could only do so with increasing astonishment. Not only did he reach the honarable age of 84, throughout his whole life he remained astoundingly prolific - and with great success. Moreover, besides his work as a composer, Kodály was active as a conductor, (ethno-)musicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. And in each of these areas, he had a pioneering role, always with exceptional passion and dedication. To name but one example: together with his friend Belá Bartók he worked on a ten volume reference guide to Hungarian music, which appeared from 1951 with each volume spanning more than a thousand pages. Yet, Kodály gained acclaim for his compositions as...
more

Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, born in 1905. If you would read Kodály's biography, you could only do so with increasing astonishment. Not only did he reach the honarable age of 84, throughout his whole life he remained astoundingly prolific - and with great success. Moreover, besides his work as a composer, Kodály was active as a conductor, (ethno-)musicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. And in each of these areas, he had a pioneering role, always with exceptional passion and dedication. To name but one example: together with his friend Belá Bartók he worked on a ten volume reference guide to Hungarian music, which appeared from 1951 with each volume spanning more than a thousand pages.
Yet, Kodály gained acclaim for his compositions as well, with his Psalmus hungaricus (1923) en his opera Háry János (1926) as the pinnacles of his musical career. The core of his body of work consists of vocal music, in particular works for choir, but his instrumental music is just as impressive. His master piece Laudes Organi, written one year before his death, truly proves that Kodály's creative energy stayed with him to the bitter end.


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Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century.   Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The last of these transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His 'Russian phase' which continued with works such as Renard, The Soldier's Tale and Les Noces, was followed...
more
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century.
Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). The last of these transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His "Russian phase" which continued with works such as Renard, The Soldier's Tale and Les Noces, was followed in the 1920s by a period in which he turned to neoclassical music. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto grosso, fugue and symphony), drawing on earlier styles, especially from the 18th century. This style was often referred to as Neoclassicism. In the 1950s, Stravinsky adopted serial procedures. His compositions of this period shared traits with examples of his earlier output: rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few two- or three-note cells and clarity of form, and of instrumentation.

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