Violin Concerto (vinyl) by Antje Weithaas

Johannes Brahms

Antje Weithaas

Violin Concerto (vinyl)

Price: € 29.95
Format: LP 12inch
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085533435
Catnr: AVI 8553343
Release date: 12 February 2016
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1 LP 12inch ✓ in stock	€ 29.95	Buy

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)

In addition to her phenomenal career as a soloist and chamber musician, Antje Weithaas is a soughtafter conductor, particularly renowned for her play-conduct collaborations with leading international chamber orchestras.
As artistic director of Camerata Bern for nearly a decade, she helped shape the ensemble’s distinctive musical identity and continues to collaborate with them regularly. From the concertmaster’s podium, she has conducted large-scale repertoire, including Beethoven’s symphonies, and has recorded works by Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and Beethoven for CAvi.
She has also enjoyed a close artistic partnership as artiste associé with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris.
In 2025, she will embark on a South American tour with the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra. Her extensive discography includes Beethoven’s and Berg’s Violin Concertos (with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and Steven Sloane, CAvi) and the complete works for violin and orchestra by Max Bruch (with the NDR Radiophilharmonie under Hermann Bäumer, CPO). Her acclaimed solo recordings feature J. S. Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas and Eugène Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas. Further highlights include celebrated recordings of Robert Schumann’s Violin Concerto and Johannes Brahms’ Double Concerto—alongside cellist Maximilian Hornung and conductor Andrew Manze—which received the BBC Music Magazine Award in the „Concerto“ category. Her recording of Aram Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto and Concerto-Rhapsody with the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie, conducted by Daniel Raiskin, was also met with critical acclaim. Antje Weithaas began playing the violin at the age of four and studied with Professor Werner Scholz at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin.
She won the Kreisler Competition in Graz in 1987, the Bach Competition in Leipzig in 1988, and the prestigious Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition Hannover in 1991, which she now co-directs artistically with Oliver Wille. After teaching for several years at the Universität der Künste Berlin, she joined the faculty at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in 2004, where she has since become one of the world’s most respected violin pedagogues.
She performs on a 2001 violin by Peter Greiner.

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Camerata Bern

CAMERATA BERN, founded in 1962 and consisting of 15 soloists, stands for artistic excellence as well as for curiosity and the joy of playing, always fostering tradition as well as breaking new ground and engaging audiences with a multifaceted programme.
Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and cellist Steven Isserlis are associated with the ensemble as Artistic Partners.
CAMERATA BERN is committed to artistic diversity and moves between preserving the string ensemble tradition, engaging with historical performance practice and actively embracing new concert formats and contemporary music.
Rooted in Bern with its own concert series, CAMERATA BERN regularly performs at international festivals and in leading concert halls in Switzerland, Europe and beyond. While CAMERATA BERN cultivates the chamber music style of ensemble playing, it calls upon additional musicians for each individual project.
In addition to the collaborations with the Artistic Partners, the ensemble is regularly performing with soloists and guest leaders such as Anna Prohaska, Kristian Bezuidenhout, Alina Ibragimova or its former Artistic Director Antje Weithaas.
CAMERATA BERN‘s numerous recordings have won international awards, such as the Grand Prix du Disque, the German Record Critics‘ Award and the BBC Music Magazine Award. CAMERATA BERN and Antje Weithaas released a critically acclaimed recording of P-eteris Vasks’ second violin concerto in 2024 on the CAvi-music label. Most recently, the album EXILE has been published in January 2025 with Artistic Partner Patricia Kopatchinakaja on the Alpha Classics label.
The ensemble also regularly brings music directly to the people, beyond the traditional concert context, with school concerts in the canton of Bern and with the ‘KonzertGeschenke’ format in rural areas and in social and educational institutions such as asylum centres, prisons and special schools.

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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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