Kalliwoda: Violin-Concertini Nr.1 & 5 (opp.15 & 133)

More Kalliwoda Discoveries. Owing to a number of CD recordings, Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda, a Bohemian composer who spent most of his professional life as the court chapel master in Donaueschingen, is now known to experts as an insider’s tip between the earlier generation represented by Beethoven and the following generation represented by Schumann and Mendelssohn. Kalliwoda was perhaps the most important mediator between classicism and romanticism, and our new series featuring his overtures and violin concertos most firmly substantiates this judgment. Kalliwoda occupied himself with the overture genre throughout his life. He composed no fewer than twenty-four overtures – which may be a record for the nineteenth century. Kalliwoda was very much interested in making available works that were completely tailored to the function of the opening of a symphony concert: they were supposed to capture the audience’s attention. Accordingly, they had to offer something captivating and exciting without staking a claim to too much individual weight. In their dimensions his violin concertinos, in principle violin concertos reduced in size, are distinguished by highly virtuosic violin figurations, which are outstandingly mastered by our interpreter Adriana Daskalakis. An American by birth with Greek roots, she is valued internationally as an artist with a critical understanding of music and a profound knowledge of musical language and its historical development.