FANTASIES FROM OPERA FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO

Two fantasies on the thematic fragments from the string quartets.-'- Two fantasies on the thematic fragments from the 9th & 3rd string quartets of Paisiello.Matthias Pintscher was born in Marl in North Rhine-Westphalia Germany in 1971 and studied composition with Giselher Klebe and Manfred Trojahn. Formative influences were his encounters with Hans Werner Henze who invited him to Montepulciano in 1991 and 1992 and with Helmut Lachenmann Pierre Boulez and Peter Eötvös. Awards include first prize in the Hitzacker Composition Competition (1992) the Rolf Liebermann Prize and the Opera Prize from the Körber Foundation Hamburg (1993 and 1996) the Prince Pierre de Monaco Prize (1999) Composition Prize from the Salzburg EasterFestival and the Hindemith Prize from the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival (2000). In 2002 he was awarded the Hans Werner Henze Prize (Westphalian Music Prize). Pintscher first came to international attention with the opera Thomas Chatterton at the Semper Opera Dresden (1998) and later with his second opera L'espace dernier at the Opéra National de Paris (2004). He was composer-in-residence with the Cleveland Orchestra in 2002 the following seasons at the Konzerthaus Dortmund Lucerne Festival with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Saarbrücken at the Philharmonie Cologne and at the RSO Stuttgart . From 2010 onwards Pintscher is ?Artist-in-Association? at the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra since 2014 Artist-in-residence at the Danish Radio Orchestra. As a conductor Matthias Pintscher works regularly with leading orchestras and ensembles in Europe and the USA. From 2007 to 2009 he was Professor of Composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich and 2010 to 2011 at the New York University. He is Music Director of the Ensemble intercontemporain and since the 2013 14 season. As of September 2014 he is Professor for composition at the Juilliard School of Music New York.

Quite early in his career Pablo De Sarasate produced a series of fantasies on themes from popular operas for solo Violin with Orchestral or Piano accompaniment. The appeal of the Carmen fantasy with which this collection opens has remained the most enduring but perhaps reflecting the varying fortunes with audiences of the operas themselves settings of Gounod?s Faust and Roméo et Juliette or Weber?s Der Freischütz are ready for reappraisal today as similarly exhilarating exercises in Romantic violin technique.As an example of Sarasate?s equally successful and more purely lyrical ?salon? style of composition his Rêverie Op.4 is alsoincluded here.