Have you ever been surprised to run into someone you know while travelling or not where you normally expect to see them? Coincidence can be a real delight. These days you might expect to see someone or even plan it, with social media tagging our location.
Long before facebook or yelp, composers and performers connected in person and through letters. We’ll hear some cool connections, made in the salon of Heinrich von Herzogenberg, and talk with violinists Renaud Capuçon and Cecilia Zilliacus on today’s What’s New.
Amanda Maier was a Swedish/German composer and violinist who died tragically young at age 41. Her music is starting to become more well known, no less a figure than Edvard Grieg praised her music! Julius Rontgen married Maier, who had studied with Julius’ dad - a violinist in Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra. Leipzig was also the locale for a great musical circle of Heinrich von Herzogenberg, a good friend of Brahms. Seems like a classical music version of six degrees of Kevin Bacon? Just imagine if they had snapchat or facebook!
Composers such a Grieg speek highly of Maier, her stern, upstanding beauty to the music. There is subtlety too, nice instrumental detail, long melodies that are distinctive and notably malleable. - Gramophone
Born in Chambéry in 1976, Renaud Capuçon began his studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris at the age of fourteen, winning numerous awards during his five years there. Following this, Capuçon moved to Berlin to study with Thomas Brandis and Isaac Stern, and was awarded the Prize of the Berlin Academy of Arts. In 1997, Capuçon was invited by Claudio Abbado to become concertmaster of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, which he led for three summers, working with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Seiji Ozawa, Daniel Barenboim, Franz Welser-Moest and Abbado himself.
Renaud Capuçon plays the Guarneri del Gesù “Panette” (1737) that belonged to Isaac Stern, bought for him by the Banca Svizzera Italiana (BSI).
