Playing the romantic repertoire on instruments of that period feels like arriving at home in my music.
Passion for Brahms
The Brahms Trilogy and my Streicher & Söhne Piano
Brahms and the Austrian ‘Fin de Siècle’
I feel a deep passion for Brahms and for the music and cultural life of the late 19th century until WWI – specifically that of Vienna. My special interest is the performance practice in the repertoire of the late 19th and early 20th century of central Europe. Being Austrian myself, I feel….
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Brahms and the Austrian ‘Fin de Siècle’
I feel a deep passion for Brahms and for the music and cultural life of the late 19th century until WWI – specifically that of Vienna.
My special interest is the performance practice in the repertoire of the late 19th and early 20th century of central Europe. Being Austrian myself, I feel an inherently deep closeness to my home lands culture, music, and life. Austria was considered the ‘cultural hub’ of the world at that time and many artists, literates, architects and scientists moved to the city to be part of that exciting and intense life. The air was filled with esprit, ideas, inventions. This was the time of the ‘Fin de Siècle’, a time of great traditions being held up versus seeking ‘the new’ in music, culture and society – lasting only little more than a decade, 1890-1914.
In the arts, the ‘Wiener Secession’ was founded by Gustav Klimt and his friends, a movement standing for freedom in culture, striving to burst all conventional traditions. At the same time Sigmund Freud discovered the importance of emotions and the unconscious, and psychoanalysis was born. Most of the buildings we still see in the city of Vienna, the famous ‘Ringstrasse’, all the main concert halls, universities and museums were built during that time – representational for the center of power of the gigantic Austrian empire. These were the buildings and places where Brahms himself would walk by, meet his friends, enjoy good food, listen to exciting, or not so exciting performances, and where he himself would give and conduct numerous concerts, often featuring his own new compositions. He himself was a musical center point during that time in Vienna, and the chamber concert hall of the famous Musikverein dedicated to him still remains named the ‘Brahms Saal’.
When I began to study performance practice of the ‘Fin de Siècle’ with my 18th century violin strung with pure guts, I not only got to experience the same lively excitement when playing the baroque violin, I found an even more precious gift: a profound deep passion for performance practice of this time and place. And I realized – this is where my musical heart belongs.
The sound of Brahms and a tradition brought to life
I am very fortunate to own what we call in Austria a ‚Brahms piano‘. It is a 1879 Streicher & Söhne grand piano, similar to what Brahms himself had for the last 20 years in his Viennese apartment. Brahms’ own piano was a gift by the company and we know that he had a deep appreciation for the sound.
Almost all parts of my piano are original from when it was built – even most of the strings are – although the piano really disagrees having to live within the New England’s climate and drastic weather changes. The sound is indescribably beautiful. Clear, wooden warm, rich. Hearing Brahms and his contemporaries being played on this piano is breathtaking. It touches me deeply. It brings tears to my eyes every single time.
Wanting to bring the music from that time to life as much as possible and share this beautiful piano with the public, I came up with the idea of house concerts. At Brahms’ times house concerts in a small circle amongst close friends were very common. Composers would gather with colleagues and play through ‘fresh from the paper’ new music. In Brahms’ case the music gatherings usually took place at homes and estates of his wealthy friend’s, accompanied by a small group of selected friends, and of course very good food. Brahms carried a great appreciation not only for his dearest friends, honest and thoughtful conversations, but also very good food and wine.
With my house concerts I follow part of the tradition of Brahms’ time, and the concerts become concert-talk experiences, including Austrian wine.
‚Brahms Trilogy‘ concert series
My ‚Brahms Trilogy’ concert series consists of three one hour concerts.
Each concert is themed and includes one of Brahms three violin sonatas, surrounded by works from contemporary composers of Brahms, all of whom he either knew personally, or knew of.
The Trilogy concert themes are: ‚Brahms and the Schumann‘s‘ – ‚Brahms and his Frenemies‘ -‚Brahms and Female Pioneers‘.
Although the three concerts are meant being performed as a Trilogy in a timely manner, I already have performed them singularly.
All composers and pieces are specifically chosen to tell about relationships, personal or professional, and commonalities and or differences in music. It was and continues to be a lot of fun doing all the research beyond the music, and some very exciting details have already been discovered. It is a wonderful and exciting adventure to explore the connections between Brahms and his contemporaries and I love to share facts and tales with my audience. These special performances are historically informed concerts on period instruments accompanied by heartfelt and interesting conversations with good wine – just as it was common during Brahms’ own times.
The Story behind - my passion for Brahms
The Story of how the passion for period performance found me
Performance practice has always had a special place in my heart. Early on in my modern concert violin studies, I began to also study baroque violin. I was deeply fascinated and touched by the thought that the sound of these pure gut strings on my baroque violin was the sound J.S.Bach and his contemporaries….
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The Story of how the passion for period performance found me
Performance practice has always had a special place in my heart. Early on in my modern concert violin studies, I began to also study baroque violin. I was deeply fascinated and touched by the thought that the sound of these pure gut strings on my baroque violin was the sound J.S.Bach and his contemporaries heard when making and listening to their music being played! It sounded so raw, so direct, so alive in my ears. I played and performed with my baroque violin, an instrument from 1768, all over Europe in old baroque churches, castles, opera houses, and places where these giants of music once made music of their own. Performing the sound of their times on my own baroque violin all of a sudden led to a moment of realization and Bach became alive. I could feel, hear, and see him gracefully yet purposefully walking these places in his particular fashion, completed with black heeled shoes, and of course the white wig. I saw him moving his arms in a very manneristic elegant motion, and a deep serious and dedicated expression in the face – determined to serve God, and the King, with his music. What a lively sense I got, and oh – goose bumps all over.
I fell even more in love with performance practice.
However, I didn’t want to solely play baroque music. I didn’t want to give up my ‘modern’ violin and the beautiful musical repertoire that came after the baroque time. And yet, I missed the same aliveness, and I yearned for that same experience playing the later repertoire.
It was common throughout Europe for string players to use pure gut strings until WWI, when natural resources became very precious and scarce and got eventually replaced by steel strings. Nowadays, the romantic repertoire is very rarely played on historic instrumentation – understandably so, as it is a true challenge to deal with natural guts reacting to humidity, dryness, heating, and the high 440-443Hz pitch of today.
For a long time during my career I felt somewhat lost in-between worlds having had the experience playing baroque music and the longing for that same experience playing the later repertoire.
When the romantic repertoire came to life
And then one day, I decided to put the pure gut strings onto my mid 19th century violin while playing this later repertoire.
I began studying performance practice of the late 19th century until the early 20th century and began working with specialist Dr. Clive Brown on performance practice. Once again, my eyes and ears were opened in a most profound new way. I discovered the abundance of contemporary musical witnesses we have of that time – detailed descriptions of the ‘how to do’. They were all there in written, spoken and recorded living testimonies!
I also decided to face all ups and downs that come along with playing on pure gut strings on a modern violin – all the hassles of dealing with the moods of pure guts tuned up to the appropriate frequency, the profoundly different required technique of left hand, and the bow to make the strings not only sound good, but filled with expression that reaches and touches. It was frustrating and I never had so many strings break in my life at first! It was annoying to have the fingers stick to the natural material of the pure gut and not just slide smoothly up and down like they do on steel or silver woundings. Not to mention, the terrible squeak every single time the bow touches the strings on the not-perfect spot – these pure guts definitely have their own opinion about being treated well, and this, I realized, is a love affair. Investing my time and energy into this love affair was worth the outcome. I got rewarded with depth, richness in sound in a way I never thought would be possible, alongside of a new understanding of this wonderful repertoire. And the miracle occurred again: the music and their composers became alive. And I had goose bumps all over again.
From this a deep understanding arose and I knew I have arrived at home in my music.