Benjamin Schmid - Kammermusik fur Violine und Gitarre - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

With Storie di Napoli, la festa musicale now presents it's third production on AUDITE and approaches the varied and expressive Neapolitan baroque repertoire with an innovative approach. Sensual arias and virtuoso concerti by composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti, Francesco Mancini and Nicola Fiorenza combine in this concept album to create a sonic collage that tells Naples' best stories and pages from the Baroque heyday of what was then Europe's third-largest metropolis. These include an encounter with the seductive siren Parthenope, to whom the mythological foundation of the city goes back, a visit to Naples' multi-layered underworld with thoroughly surprising twists and turns, and the exuberant atmosphere of typical Neapolitan street life full of festivities and joie de vivre. Together with the young, promising soprano Maria Ladurner and under the direction of the renowned recorder player Barbara Heindlmeier, who is known for innovative concepts, la festa musicale treads a completely new path in this project. Sometimes the movement sequences of the concerti are broken up and interwoven with the arias. In this way, a new, overarching storyline is told that skillfully captures the multi-layered facets of a fascinating city. The North German baroque ensemble la festa musicale stands for first-class artistic quality, which is reflected in creative, cross-disciplinary concert formats and top-class collaborations. In addition to well-known works, Storie di Napoli also features rarely heard discoveries and a premiere recording of the aria InchNel mio pettoInch (from Il ritorno d'Ulisse) by Giuseppe Porsile. The richness of color, the emotional density and the fast-moving contrasts of this repertoire are underlined by the baroque ensemble with variable instrumentation and - completely dedicated to the art of ornamentation and improvisation of the baroque - it's own contrib

On the occasion of the 2025 Kreisler anniversary year, the exceptional violinist Benjamin Schmid posed the question What happens for the violin in Vienna roughly 100 years after Fritz Kreisler?The result is this phenomenal recording with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna under Lorenz Aichner, featuring orchestrated works by Kreisler and the world premiere recording of the Concerto for Beni for Solo Violin and String Orchestra (2023) by Georg Breinschmid, born in Vienna in 1973.To quote the dedicatee, it is a Inchmagnificent violin concerto that, from my perspective, shares much with the musical understanding of Fritz Kreisler music with unadulterated joy of playing, which devotes itself immediately and as artfully as possible to the parameters of melody, harmonic experience, and dance-like (or groovy) rhythm. There is always a close relationship to instrumental virtuosity and sonority - something very strongly pronounced in both composers.InchThe album includes Fritz Kreisler's Preludium and Allegro Inchin the Style of PugnaniInch and the Viennese Rhapsodic Fantasietta in arrangements for (string) orchestra. Kreisler's Concerto in One Movement, based on the first movement of Paganini's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 6, is presented here in an arrangement for wind orchestra, recorded with the Salzburg Wind Philharmonic under Hansjörg Angerer.

Benjamin Schmid has long been considered one of the most versatile violin virtuosos of our time, being equally at home in the classical as well as in the jazz genre. Following his album with Jazz Violin Concertos, Schmid doubles down with the Salzburg Wind Philharmonic under the direction of conducted by Hansjorg Angerer with works by Friedrich Gulda and Kurt Weill. Gulda opened up a new era of musical freedom with his InchConcerto for Violoncello and wind orchestraInch (here in a version for violin) at it's world premiere in 1981 at the Vienna Konzerthaus in 1981. The zest of pop music, yodeling themes, brass bands from the Salzkammergut, brass music on Kirtag, swing, funk and free-jazz borrowings all come together to create a rousing whole that leaves not a dry eye in the house - with cheerfulness and joie de vivre. With the Violin Concerto op. 12, which was premiered in 1925, Kurt Weill's breakthrough. In Weill's oeuvre this work represents the peak of his avant-garde tendencies The harmony tells of his admiration of Arnold Schoenberg, the formal characteristics of the influence of Busoni, the often motoric rhythm of the knowledge of Paul Hindemith. Two works for solo violin - InchFor FritzInch (dedicated to Fritz Kreisler) by Benjamin Schmid and InchYoukaliInch by Kurt Weill - complement this brilliant performance.