2015 Program Notes, Book 3 |
43
Since successfully participating in many international
competitions,
TANJA TETZLAFF
has been playing with such
prestigious orchestras as theTonhalle-Orchester Zürich,Orchestra
of the Bayerische Rundfunk München, Bamberger Symphoniker,
Cincinnati Symphony, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen,
Camerata Salzburg and West Australian Symphony Orchestra
Perth. She gives regular recitals with some of the world’s foremost
musicians, including Lars Vogt, Alexander Lonquich, Leif Ove
Andsnes, Antje Weithaas, Martin Fröst, Florian Donderer, Gunilla
Süssmann and her brother Christian, with whom she has founded
the Tetzlaff Quartet, together with Elisabeth Kufferath and Hanna Weinmeister. With
this Quartet and also with Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt or with Baiba and Lauma
Skride forming a trio, she appears regularly in Europe and the United States. Along
with classical cello concertos, Tanja Tetzlaff often performs music of the 20th and 21st
centuries, including the German premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Cello Concerto and
Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s
Pas de trios
. She appears frequently at summer festivals,
including Risør, Beethovenfest Bonn and Schubertiade, and belongs to the core
players at the Heimbach-Festival “Spannungen.” With her duo partner, pianist Gunilla
Süssmann, she regularly tours Scandinavia, Germany and Switzerland; their first CD,
with works by Sibelius, Grieg and Rachmaninov, was released in 2007 by CAvi-music.
Tanja Tetzlaff also has recorded Haydn’s Cello Concertos with the Wiener Chamber
Orchestra. A CD was released giving a musical portrayal of her as an artist with solo
pieces by Bach, Kodály, Britten und Esa-Pekka Salonen and Schumann’s Cello Concerto,
accompanied by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie conducted by Heinz Holliger. A
CD with concertos by Rihm and Ernst Toch will be released in the near future. Tanja
Tetzlaff plays a cello by Giovanni Baptista Guadagnini made in 1776.
Friday, July 3, 2015
ROUNDS FOR STRING ORCHESTRA
(1944)
David Diamond (1915-2005)
Diamond’s
Rounds
is scored for strings alone. The performance
time is 29 minutes. This is the first performance of the work by the
Grant Park Orchestra.
David Diamond, born in 1915 in Rochester, began
“composing” as a small boy in a notation of his own invention.
Financial difficulties forced the family to live with relatives
in Cleveland in 1927, but there young David’s musical abilities brought him to the
attention of the local violin teacher André de Ribaupierre, who underwrote his study in
the preparatory department of the Cleveland Institute of Music. The family returned to
Rochester in 1929, and David was accepted as a preparatory student at the Eastman
School. He then spent a year as an undergraduate at Eastman, but in 1934 went to
New York, where he supported himself with odd jobs while studying at the New Music
School with Roger Sessions. In 1935, his
Sinfonietta
won the $2,500 first prize in a
competition sponsored by bandleader Paul Whiteman; George Gershwin was one of
the judges. Diamond was subsequently commissioned to write a ballet entitled
Tom
on a scenario by e.e. cummings, for which the patron, Cary Ross, paid his expenses to
travel to Paris to collaborate with the production’s choreographer, Léonide Massine.
Diamond returned to Paris the following year to study with Nadia Boulanger, meeting
and receiving inspiration from Stravinsky, Ravel, Roussel, Charles Munch and André
Gide during his stay. After another year of frugal living in New York’s Greenwich Village
(during which he worked as a violinist on the popular
Lucky Strike Hit Parade
radio
show), he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, allowing him to return to Europe to
resume his studies with Boulanger.
