| 1 CD |
|
Notify when available |
| Label Antarctica |
UPC 0608917739022 |
Catalogue number AR 090 |
Release date 05 February 2027 |
Nico Baltussen (violin) and Geert Callaert (piano) recorded a joyful selection of music around the theme of love. This album connects great art music by Edvard Grieg, César Franck, Alfred Schnittke, Johann Sebastian Bach and Sergei Rachmaninov. The music pictures in various aspects what the theme of love can evoke, from pathos to inward tenderness, from exuberant virtuosity to intimate, tranquil textures of sound.
The Belgian composer and pianist Geert Callaert studied at the Lemmens Institute (Leuven, Belgium) and completed his studies there with the seldom awarded diploma Lemmens-Tinel Prize with honours in piano, chamber music, piano accom- paniment, orchestral conducting, advanced musical analysis and composition. His professor of har- mony was Kurt Bikkembergs, he took lessons in counterpoint with Jan Van der Roost and composition with Luc Van Hove. He is a scholarship holder of the Orpheus Institute Ghent and holds a professorship at HOGENT & Howest – KASK & Conservatorium Ghent. He is also a member of the artistic advisory board and a core musician of the HERMESensemble (hermesensemble.be). In 2016, the Union of Belgian Composers awarded him the FUGA Trophee 2015, an award for the performance and promotion of Belgian art music (ucb-ubc.be/historique), with an unanimous vote.
He collaborated during his career with high end fellow ensembles (HERMESensemble, Prometheus Ensemble), orchestras (Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Belgian National Orchestra, Brussels Philharmonic) and performers such as Eddy Vanoosthuyse, Koen Kessels, Ed Spanjaard, Michel Tabachnik, Ben Haemhouts, Hervé Joulain, Bert Helsen, Joe Alessi, Joan La Barbara, Elizabeth Laurence, Tim De Maeseneer, Henry Raudales, Glenn Van Looy, Carlo Willems, the Canadian choreographer Edouard Lock, Ilia Laporev, Maximilian Lohse and Jadranka Gasparovic. As a performer he recorded over 30 CDs and DVDs. His name can be found in the credits as a pianist for different international film productions (amon- gst them are Les innocentes – 2016, Director Anne Fontaine, France/ Poland; High Rise – 2015, Director Ben Wheatley, UK; Heojil kyolshim – Decision to Leave – 2022, Director Park Chan-Wook, South-Korea).
Performances and professional encounters with composers such as Charles Wuorinen, Kaija Saariaho, Ivan Fedele, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Dirk Brossé, Luc Ferrari, Gavin Bryars, Konrad Boehmer, Tristan Murail, Marc Yeats, Luc Brewaeys, Wim Henderickx, George De Decker and Michael Sahl have helped him finding his way as a composer. His interest in literature and the visual arts is a source of inspiration for his musical compositions. In addi- tion, his compositions reveal a deep fascination with the First Viennese School and Brahms’ developing varia- tion technique, which have evolved from a new consonant aesthetic to a newer aesthetic of time and sound exploration. His catalogue of works includes instrumental and vocal music. He composes solo and chamber music as well as orchestral music. In the field of vocal music, his oeuvre is mainly devoted to writing madrigals. His works are performed by international artists worldwide and have been recorded on different CDs and DVDs. His work is published by Hofmeister Musikverlag (Leipzig - Germany).
Nico's career as a violinist took off when he won the European prize in the Pro Civitate competition, currently called Belfius Classics. His personal style evolved as a member of the European Youth Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado, and developed as a result of organising workshops for the International Congress of Christian Artists in Holland.
In 1983 he won the Tenuto Competition where he played the first violin concerto by Dmitri Shostakovich with the BRT Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Fernand Terby. He also was a member of the Spiegel string Quartet and various chamber music ensembles like Champ d'Action and the Hermes Ensemble, as well as a concert leader of the New Belgian Chamber Orchestra.
Nico Baltussen is permanent first violinist of the Ensemble Piacevole, the internationally acclaimed string quintet which afterwards (typical for Belgium!) also made its marks on the Belgian scene thanks to collaborations with names from all walks of musical lyfe: Alfredo Marcucci (bandoneon) , Philippe Catherine (jazz guitar), Robby Lacatosh (gipsy violin), Myriam Fuks (klezmer song),Philippe Thuriot (accordeon) Tuur Florizoone (accordeon), Robin Verheyen (jazz sax) ,and many more...
He also gives recitals with his daughter Barbara who is a magnificent pianist. Their performances together are always a source of joy and communication for themselves, but also for the public.
Nico is a violin teacher and coördinator of the Academy in Sint-Niklaas, the town where he lives. He also teaches the violin and chamber music at the Lemmensinstitute in Leuven.
Since taking his degree in Developmental Psychology he has also been applying himself to violin therapy, which he is striving to develop further.
Nico is playing on a wonderful Hendrik Jacobs of 1691, made in Amsterdam.
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.
Alfred Schnittke was the son to German-Jewish father and Volga-German mother from Frankfurt am Main. His musical education started in 1946 in Vienna, where his father worked as a journalist and translator, and from 1948 he continued his studies in Moscow. From the 1970s, he would fully dedicate himself to composing. Schnittke's style was initially avant garde, strongly influenced by the Western composition techniques such as serialism and aleatorism. Like so many of his generation, Schnittke found these techniques to be unsatisfactory, and so he created his own style which he called polystylism, inspired by Charles Ives, Luciano Berio and Bernd Alois Zimmermann, but also Gustav Mahler,It is characterised by the parodic combinations of styles from different periods, by some recognised as postmodernism.
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