Susanne Lautenbacher
is a German violinist and teacher born (in Augsburg) on April 19, 1932. She is known for being an advocate of baroque
music before it was in vogue. She is
also known for recording seldom heard works – the works of Locatelli, Biber,
Rolla, Hummel, Viotti, Weill, Schorr, and Reger for example. One of her early teachers was Karl Freund in
Munich. She later studied with Henryk
Szeryng. She recorded for many labels
and her discography is fairly extensive – her recording activity spans more
than forty years. She was the violinist
of the Bell’ Arte Trio as well. She
taught for many years (beginning in 1965) at the Stuttgart Conservatory. Here is an audio file of one of her
recordings, a concerto by Antonio Vivaldi from the Four Seasons - Summer, taken at a very leisurely pace. Lautenbacher is becoming (or has already become) an iconic figure
for her thoughtful, incisive, and engaging interpretations.
Heinrich Biber (Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber von Bibern) was a Czech (some
would say Austrian) violinist and composer born (in Wartenberg) on a date
unknown but probably in July or August of 1644.
Although he was a virtuosic violinist and highly regarded in his day for
his skill in playing the violin, he is today better known as a composer. One source states that he seldom (if ever)
toured as a concert violinist. He was in
the employ of the nobility and wrote music, both secular and sacred, for
them. He was even ascended to the
nobility (1690 - at about age 45) by one of his employers. Just as Bach, Vivaldi, Zelenka, and a few
other Baroque composers lost favor and remained obscure during a time span of
one hundred years or more but were re-discovered, Biber and his music enjoyed a renaissance in the
late 1900s. This was due mainly to the
discovery of a brilliant set of violin sonatas known as the Mystery Sonatas or
the Rosary Sonatas. The set is comprised
of 15 works plus a Passacaglia attached to the end as number 16. There are quite a number of recordings of the
Sonatas, just as there are dozens of recordings of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Biber is said to be one of the most important
composers of violin music – just as are Locatelli, Corelli, Vivaldi, Tartini,
Paganini, Spohr, Viotti, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, Sarasate, and a few
others. Little is known of his early
life. He did work at various courts from
an early age. Eventually he ended up
spending the bulk of his career in Salzburg – from the year 1670 onward;
playing, conducting, and composing for Maximilian Gandolph, Archbishop of
Salzburg. This was about 90 years before
Mozart’s time. Biber first published his
works in 1676. He was 32 years old. In 1679, he became assistant music director
and in 1684, he was appointed music director.
Today, his most popular and best-known work consists of the Mystery
Sonatas, although they were not published during Biber’s lifetime. If he played these sonatas himself, he must
have been an extraordinary violinist because they are riddled with
difficulties. In addition, all of the
sonatas require that the violin be tuned other than in the usual fifths – only
the Passacaglia is played with normal tuning.
Biber composed much music for choir and orchestra as well as other
instrumental works, some of it quite exploratory or experimental in
nature. A piece entitled The Battle
(that’s the abbreviated title) makes use of effects which would not again see
the light of day until more than two hundred years later – extreme polytonality,
imitations of drums, imitations of canon fire, unusual harmonic progressions,
and insertion of extraneous objects into instruments to change their texture. Here is part one of a YouTube video of a
performance of the piece. Here is part
two of the same performance. This is
part one of a partita (Partia) for six players in seven movements. This is part two of the same partita. And finally, eight of the famous Mystery
Sonatas can be found here. About one
minute and 15 seconds into the Praeludium of Sonata number one you may think
you hear a striking resemblance to the main melody in the second movement of
Saint Saens’ first piano concerto but that is probably just a striking
coincidence. Similarly, Sonata number 15
contains a tiny portion which somewhat resembles the theme of Paganini’s
twenty-fourth Caprice. Biber died on May
3, 1704, at age 59.
Tomaso Albinoni (Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni) was an Italian violinist and composer born on June 8, 1671 (Bach would not be born until 14 years later.) He is known for his oboe concertos, though he wrote quite a lot of other music. Coming from a wealthy family, he never had to work for the nobility. Very little is known about his personal life. His 50 operas are unknown today, except to musicologists. Albinoni died on January 17, 1751, at age 79.
