Tabea Zimmermann Archives - NativeDSD Music

Tabea Zimmermann: Solo II

Sjoerd Staal — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 13:18:27 +0000

“We need Bach’s music, regardless of the instrument” – Tabea Zimmermann

Ten years after her acclaimed album “Solo” with the first two cello suites of Johann Sebastian Bach, violist Tabea Zimmermann now sets her sights on Suites Nos. 3 and 4. She pairs them with excerpts from György Kurtág’s cycle “Games, Signs & Messages”, selecting six numbers to form her own personal homage to Bach.

For what kind of instruments did Bach write his solo suites BWV 1007-1012? How did they sound, what did they look like? This subject still gives rise to much speculation. Johann Peter Kellner’s manuscript copy from the early 1700s is one of the two main sources for the six solo suites, and it indicates a viola basso. The violoncello had not yet become standardized in terms of size, construction, and playing technique; Bach probably had instruments in mind such as the violoncello piccolo or the viola da spalla. The latter was a viola attached in front of the body by a strap: Bach performed the viola da spalla in public himself – possibly these suites. Tabea Zimmermann has not switched her musical hardware for this recording: here she plays her 1980 Vatelot viola with a classical bow.

In 2009, the album “Solo” (MYR003, also available at NativeDSD) launched Tabea Zimmermann’s collaboration with the myrios classics label. The release was crowned with a multitude of international awards: Gramophone Editor’s Choice, “Stern des Monats” in Fono Forum, 4f in Télérama and 5 Stars in the Italian magazine Musica; moreover, in response to that groundbreaking recording, the jury of the coveted German ECHO Klassik Prize selected Tabea Zimmermann as “2010 Instrumentalist of the Year”.

“The original Solo I album from 2009 was the start of our collaboration and turned out being one of the most successful viola albums. 10 years after this album, Tabea and I met in the studio again (this time in the Jesus Christus Kirche Berlin) to record two more Bach cello suites (on viola of course), interwoven this time by a „suite“ of 6 pieces from the cycle „Signs, Games & Messages“ by György Kurtág, including the piece Kurtág dedicated to Tabea (…eine Blume für Tabea…/ a flower for Tabea).”

— Stephan Cahen, Producer & Recording Engineer

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Sonatas for Viola and Piano Vol. 2

Sjoerd Staal — Sat, 11 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Three sonatas, truly late works, all written during the Final years of their composers’ lives. Three sonatas, all originally composed for an instrument other than the viola. Three sonatas which embrace almost the whole of the 19th century.

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Romance oubliée

Sjoerd Staal — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

With this album I have fulfilled my long-held dream of recording a collection of beautiful Romantic miniatures: many of the pieces featured here are largely unknown, and they amply exploit the viola’s melancholy facets and moods. This dream has become a reality for me partly due to Paul Hindemith – in fact, thanks to having intensely studied Hindemith’s oeuvre.

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Tabea Zimmermann: Solo I

Sjoerd Staal — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

When Max Reger and his chamber music are mentioned, music lovers immediately think of compositions for organ, lieder or the great piano variations. The fact that over the course of many years the composer created at regular intervals a considerable number of compositions for solo strings remains an insider tip. This was a genre which was considered relatively unimportant by the 19th century and was therefore forgotten.
At the young age of 26, in 1899, Reger started working with the baroque genre for the first time and created Four Sonatas for Solo Violin op. 42. Six years later followed the Seven Sonatas for Solo Violin op. 91, about which the composer wrote to the Heidelberg musical director Philipp Wolfram on the 5th September 1905, “I am well – how the violin players are, however, I don’t know!” Once again, between 1909 and 1912, Reger devoted himself to this type of chamber music and composed Preludes and Fugues for Solo Violin op. 117.

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Sonatas for Viola and Piano

Sjoerd Staal — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

“And when I had that one little whiff of success that I‘ve had in my life, with the Viola Sonata, the rumor went around, I hear, that I hadn‘t written the stuff myself, that somebody had done it for me. And I even got one or two little bits of press clippings saying that it was impossible, that I couldn‘t have written it myself. And the funniest of all was that I had a clipping once which said that I didn‘t exist, there wasn‘t any such person as Rebecca Clarke, that it was a pseudonym for Ernest Bloch!”

This was Rebecca Clarke speaking 1976 in an radio interview about her 1919 Sonata for Viola and Piano. Clarke had submitted it to the competition sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, as part of her annual chamber music festival held in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The competition was organized with anonymous submissions, and 73 composers submitted entries for viola and piano, the instrumentation chosen for that year.

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