Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté: Bassoon Concerto, E. 124 (1950)

00:00 - I. Allegro risoluto (Entschieden, rhythmisch)
05:33 - II. Ausdrucksvoll, ohne zu schleppen, verträumt, improvisierend [attaca]
09:33 - III. Allegro risoluto (Entschieden, rhythmisch)
_____
Bassoon: Vincent Ellin
Conductor: Simon Streatfeild
Orchestra: Manitoba Chamber Orchestra
Year of Recording: 1994
_____
"Few persons in the musical world have such an exceptional international career as the composer Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatte. An infant prodigy, she eventualiy became a virtuoso pianist and violinist, performing in that capacity in Europe and America. Born in Moscow, she spent her early childhood in England and France, receiving her earliest piano training from her mother (a pupil of Anton Rubinstein) and later at the Paris Conservatoire. She studied the violin with Jacques Thibaud and Bronislaw Huberman and composition at the Prussian Academy in Berlin. Her debut in Berlin was made at the age of eleven when she performed Ludwig van Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata on the violin, and then his Appassionata Sonata on the piano. Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatte came to Canada in 1953 when her husband Dr. Ferdinand Eckhardt was appointed director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. A colourful, quixotic and energetic personality, she was an inspired teacher; her compositions, for the most part orchestral and instrumental, have been widely performed and recorded.

The Bassoon Concerto was written during the composer's final years in Vienna and premidred at a 1950 summer student festival in Bad Aussee, Austria. It is dedicated to the American bassoonist Gloria Soloway, who first performed it with the Orchestra of the Vienna Academy. It had its North American premiere in 1954 in New York. The concerto was greeted with grudging approval by the New York critics, but the composer remarked that bassoonists 'were very happy about the piece and glad to have something in which the orchestra doesn't choke them.' The concerto marked the end of a major period of composition 'in which several styles and techniques are combined in works of considerable originality.' In the main, the concerto is considered as a reaction against romantic excesses and is technically very demanding for the soloist. Even so, there is plenty of romantic expression, particularly in the slow section, which has an almost Delian rhapsodic intensity about it. The composer's own notes on the concerto describe the work as a single movement which nevertheless falls into three distinct sections. In the first movement the 'downish' qualities of the bassoon are heard to advantage, especially in the repeated notes of the central theme' A slow middle section, which is both lyrical and sombre, is introduced by unaccompanied bassoon. The final section is a kind of grand recapitulation of the first section with a striking cadenza in which the soloist expresses and develops the instrument's varied characteristics." (Jeffrey Anderson)
_____
Note: Special thanks to Ana-Maria Lipoczi of the Canadian music centre for providing a score to make this video possible!
_____
© COPYRIGHT Disclaimer, Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976. Allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

Видео Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté: Bassoon Concerto, E. 124 (1950) канала Preston Atkins