Sequenza by Franziska Hölscher

Franziska Hölscher

Sequenza

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085534463
Catnr: AVI 8553446
Release date: 02 August 2019
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Label
CAvi

UPC
4260085534463

Catalogue number
AVI 8553446

Release date
02 August 2019

"The common thread on this CD is not the music but the playing."

Luister, 17-1-2020

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

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About the album

SORROW, CONSOLATION, and HOPE
Franziska Hölscher on the freedom enjoyed by the composer
and the difficulties faced by the performer Felix Schmidt: It would seem that the works in CD programmes are usually chosen for their popularity; originality and artistic quality are often bypassed to optimize sales. On this CD, however, you have made no concessions to popularity. What were the criteria that led to your selection?

Franziska Hölscher: Regardless of what other people may think, popularity is not a criterion for me. I want to draw listeners’ attention to these works, which, in my opinion, are among the most important compositions of their time. FS: That is a way of popularizing them. FH: I suppose you could put it that way.
In recital programmes I select works to create connections and dialogue among different time periods: we can shed light on contemporary music from the angle of early music, or we can find modern traits in works of the past.

Berio’s Sequenza VIII for Violin was my point of departure. As one of the essential 20th-century works for violin, it occupies a central place in my repertoire, and has been part of my life for many years. Every time I come back to it, the Sequenza reveals new dimensions of sound. We can likewise note a certain tension between contemporary and early music in the works of Berio’s compatriot, Salvatore Sciarrino. His distinct style often explores the boundaries of timbre; Sciarrino’s typical nervousness in fast movements is reminiscent, in turn, of the music of Robert Schumann. And Sciarrino’s figures of rhetoric hark back explicitly to Baroque music. Schumann’s sonata likewise associates Baroque forms – specifically, a chorale – with progressive techniques of composition and means of expression. Thus, the relation between the present and the past is the central theme connecting all the works on this CD. (from the Booklet Notes/Interview)

Artist(s)

Franziska Hölscher (violin)

Violinist Franziska Hölscher is one of the most versatile young musicians on today’s international music scene. As a soloist, chamber musician, and festival director, she has been invited and often returns to perform at distinguished venues including the Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and the Rudolfinum in Prague. She makes appearances at the Ansbach Bach Festival, the Schleswig- Holstein Music Festival, at the Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele, the Kissinger Sommer, the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, the Rheingau Music Festival, and the Heidelberger Frühling Festival. Musical collaborations with outstanding colleagues always formed an integral part of her podium repertoire since the onset of her career. She counts Kit Armstrong, Martin Helmchen, Severin von Eckardstein, Nils Mönkemeyer, Maximilian Hornung, and Andreas...

Musical collaborations with outstanding colleagues always formed an integral part of her podium repertoire since the onset of her career. She counts Kit Armstrong, Martin Helmchen, Severin von Eckardstein, Nils Mönkemeyer, Maximilian Hornung, and Andreas Ottensamer among her chamber music partners. Hölscher also shared an intensive artistic collaboration with renowned German author Roger Willemsen, with whom she conceived the stage recital entitled Landschaften (Landscapes), featuring interrelations between text and music.

Conceiving her recital programmes from start to finish as a dramatic arc, Hölscher combines Baroque, Classical and Romantic pieces with the music of our times. At the 2018 Movimentos Festival in Wolfsburg she performed the world premiere of an early work by Wolfgang Rihm, the Concertino for Violin and Strings.
Born in Heidelberg, Franziska Hölscher was trained as a violinist by Ulf Hoelscher, Thomas Brandis, Nora Chastain, and Reinhard Goebel. In her youth she had already garnered a series of prizes at international competitions.

As an ambassador of the Rhapsody in School project initiated by Lars Vogt, Franziska Hölscher is especially committed to this outreach program offering young people the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with concert artists with concert artists. Franziska Hölscher is Artistic Director of the Klangbrücken chamber music recital series at the Konzerthaus Berlin. In 2018 she was also named Artistic Director of Mettlach Chamber Music Festival.
www.franziskahoelscher.com

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Severin von Eckardstein (piano)

Severin von Eckardstein, one of the leading German pianists of his generation, has delighted the public with many highly acclaimed concerts, e.g. in Berlin, Moscow, Madrid, London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Budapest, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul. His talent could be enjoyed at renown music festivals, including Ruhr Piano Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron in France, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Miami International Piano Festival, where he played the opening concert in 2009. He has performed with conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Philippe Herreweghe, Lothar Zagrosek and Marek Janowski, and made important debuts, among others in 2007 (Amsterdam under Paavo Järvi), Dallas (under Jaap van Zweden), Budaypest (under Zsolt Hamar). During the European lockdown in November 20 he debuted with Mariinsky Orchestra (under Valery Gergiev) and the Ural Philhamonic in...

Severin von Eckardstein, one of the leading German pianists of his generation, has delighted the public with many highly acclaimed concerts, e.g. in Berlin, Moscow, Madrid, London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Budapest, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul. His talent could be enjoyed at renown music festivals, including Ruhr Piano Festival, La Roque d’Anthéron in France, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Miami International Piano Festival, where he played the opening concert in 2009.

He has performed with conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Philippe Herreweghe, Lothar Zagrosek and Marek Janowski, and made important debuts, among others in 2007 (Amsterdam under Paavo Järvi), Dallas (under Jaap van Zweden), Budaypest (under Zsolt Hamar). During the European lockdown in November 20 he debuted with Mariinsky Orchestra (under Valery Gergiev) and the Ural Philhamonic in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
As a frequent guest of the concert series Meesterpianisten at Concertgebouw Amsterdam, he was reinvited to this extraordinary series for the 8th time in 2020.
Von Eckardstein won prizes at numerous noteworthy international competitions, e.g. Ferruccio Busoni in Bozen (1998), Leeds International Piano Competition (2000), ARD-Competition in Munich (1999) and was awarded first prize at the Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels (2003).
Musically educated by Prof. Barbara Szczepanska, Prof. Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Prof. Klaus Hellwig and at the International Piano Academy Lake Como, he himself has been serving as master class instructor on many occasions, among others in South Korea, Finland, Belgium and at the UdK, Berlin.
In 2015 he founded the chamber concert series Klangbrücken at Konzerthaus Berlin together with violinist Franziska Hölscher.
CD recordings with compositions by Medtner, Scriabin, Wagner, Schubert, Schumann, Debussy and others are highly regarded. His latest album of Dupont´s cycle La maison dans les dunes was awarded with Diapason d´Or.

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Composer(s)

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann was a German composer and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing.
Schumann's published compositions were written exclusively for the piano until 1840; he later composed works for piano and orchestra; many Lieder (songs for voice and piano); four symphonies; an opera; and other orchestral, choral, and chamber works. Works such as Carnaval, Symphonic Studies, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, and the Fantasie in C are among his most famous. His writings about music appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), a Leipzig-based publication which he jointly founded.
In 1840, Schumann married Friedrich Wieck's daughter Clara, against the wishes of her father, following a long and acrimonious legal battle, which found in favour of Clara and Robert. Clara also composed music and had a considerable concert career as a pianist, the earnings from which, before her marriage, formed a substantial part of her father's fortune.
Schumann suffered from a mental disorder, first manifesting itself in 1833 as a severe melancholic depressive episode, which recurred several times alternating with phases of ‘exaltation’ and increasingly also delusional ideas of being poisoned or threatened with metallic items. After a suicide attempt in 1854, Schumann was admitted to a mental asylum, at his own request, in Endenich near Bonn. Diagnosed with "psychotic melancholia", Schumann died two years later in 1856 without having recovered from his mental illness.

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