Ensemble Resonanz / Tabea Zimmermann

At the turn of the last century, George Enescu was working »as nervously as an engineer« on the »first suspension bridge spanning a river«. Looking back to the Romantic era, but still making great leaps in new directions, he combines Rumanian folk music, French Impressionism and the German Romantic tradition in his String Octet to form a complex amalgam of lively passages and melancholy moments, of rhapsody and whirling waltzes. A piece of visionary music for strings –heard here in the version for string orchestra – that works itself up into a true frenzy.

Enescu has the synthesis of different styles in common with Poland’s »First Lady of music«: Grażyna Bacewicz’s late Divertimento is a firework display of musical ideas. Paul Hindemith in turn writes moving and beautiful music marking the death of the king, in which the viola plaintively stands out – Tabea Zimmermann explores the depths of Hindemith’s compositions here with much subtlety. And the concert opens with Franz Schubert writing in the spirit of Rossini.