Franz Liszt – Mephisto Waltz No. 1
Eurico Carrapatoso – Cinco Elegias
Jacques Ibert – trois pièces brèves
Dmitri Shostakovich – Suite
Bela Bartok – Romanian Dances
The audience fainted at concerts of the „devil violinist“ Niccolò Paganini. Some even claim he has sold his soul to the devil to play masterly as he did.
Virtuosity is also the characteristic feature of the woodwind quintet CARION: The perfect mastery of the instruments in connection with the sophisticated stage performance makes the musicians masters of their profession.
It’s the Mephistophelian seduction that runs like a red thread through this programme. The numerous Transylvanian folk songs in the works of Bartók und Farkas lend wings to the idea Count Dracula himself shakes a leg while hearing these witty melodies.
Even the often depressive-acting Shostakovich could not resist the ease and humor while writing his dance music. And then there is Liszt with his Paganini variations and his Mephisto Waltz … mesmerizing, demanding, colorful and devilishly virtuosic! It can’t get better than this!
“What is this wonderful music? Can I come over and listen?”, said Carl Nielsen to his friend Christian Christiansen during a phone conversation back in 1921 when he heard members of the Copenhagen woodwind quintet rehearsing Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds in the background. Inspired by Mozart’s composition he soon decided to write his own work for the five winds, his famous Quintet op. 43. CARION moves between these two poles: Nielsen’s Quintet in the first part of the programme and Mozart’s inspiring Serenade KV 375