TOMMASO LONQUICH | ALEXANDER LONQUICH
Alexander Lonquich, piano
SAMPLE PROGRAMS
"Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding"
Bartok, Romanian Folk Dances Sz.56, BB68 for clarinet & piano
Brahms, Sonata in Eb major op. 120 no. 2 for clarinet & piano
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Berg, Alban, Four Pieces, op. 5 for clarinet & piano
Brahms, Sonata in f minor op. 120 no. 1 for clarinet & piano
Always the Mittel-European melting pot, gateway to the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Bohemia, Vienna in 1900 is waltzing away towards a drastic turning point: from decadent imperial capital through disillusion, to vibrant stage of the expressionist avant-guard.
This program opens four windows onto the city at that fascinating historical crucible.
We are reminded by Bartok of the folk music roots fueling the streets of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with contagious melodies and dance. We are invited to partake in Brahms’ final farewell through his nostalgic musical testament: the eloquent and lyrical clarinet sonatas op. 120. The generous romanticism of these masterpieces encounters its future counterpart in the Four Pieces, op. 5 by Alban Berg. Here music is distilled, condensed and rarified into intimate dramatic gestures of Haiku-like reticence.
Through it all, we watch Vienna in an inexorable waltz with Time, that “strange thing” so eerily described by Hofmannsthal in Der Rosenkavalier:
"As our lives go by, time means absolutely nothing. And then, one fine day, we are aware of nothing else.
It is all around us and inside of us.
It trickles over our faces, it trickles over the mirror, it streams between my temples.
And it is between you and I, and still it flows on. Silent like an hourglass."
“Paris is a moveable feast…”
Debussy, Premiere Rhapsodie for clarinet & piano
Stravinsky, Three Pieces for solo clarinet
Saint Saens, Sonata op. 167 for clarinet & piano
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Debussy, Selected Preludes for solo piano
(or Jolivet, Mana for solo piano)
Poulenc, Sonata FP 184 for clarinet & piano
The title of this program is extracted from the writings of Ernest Hemingway, who loved the mundane pleasures of Paris and contributed colorfully, like so many others, to its artistic and intellectual scene.
All the composers in this program called Paris home, some like Poulenc for their whole life, others like Stravinsky for some of their most artistically prolific years. Through their music we experience the Parisian atmosphere through infinite lenses of style: neoclassicism and romanticism, impressionism and dadaism, modernism and kitsch. And so, little by little Lady Paris comes to life through this collage of sounds: her car-horn animated streets, her perfumed parks, her cathedrals and cafes, the longing for the peaceful country; or even the memory of a home left behind, far away.
ALEXANDER LONQUICH
Alexander Lonquich performs worldwide in Japan, United States, Australia as well as at the most important European music centres. He is regular guest of prestigious Festivals, such as Salzburg Festival, “Mozartwoche Salzburg”, Piano-Festival Ruhr, Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Lucerne Festival, Cheltenham Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Kissinger Sommer, Schubertiade Schwarzenberg, Lockenhaus, Beethoven Festival in Bonn and Warsaw, a. o. He played under the baton of Claudio Abbado, Yuri Bashmet, Philippe Herreweghe, Heinz Holliger, Ton Koopman, Emmanuel Krivine, Mark Minkowski, Kurt Sanderling, Sándor Végh a.o.
Alexander Lonquich’s performances as soloist & conductor are hailed by the international media and audiences. He regularly appears with the Camerata Salzburg, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra da Camera di Mantova, Münchener Kammerorchester, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Stuttgart Chamber, the hr Symphony Orchestra Frankfurt and others.
Lonquich has been most successfully soloist of the Vienna Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, the Düsseldorf Symphonic Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, Slovenian Philharmonic, to name a few.
He is also profoundly committed to chamber music and plays with partners such as Nicolas Altstaedt, Vilde Frang, Nils Mönkemeyer, Joshua Bell, Renaud and Gautier Capuçons, Veronika Hagen, Heinz Holliger, Steven Isserlis, Leonidas Kavakos, Isabelle van Keulen, Sabine Meyer, Heinrich Schiff, Christian Tetzlaff, Carolin Widmann, Jörg Widmann, Tabea Zimmermann, the Auryn Quartet, the Carmina Quartett, to name a few.
His recordings with oeuvres of Mozart and Schubert for EMI received outstanding reviews and were awarded with prizes, such as „Diapason d’Or“ in France, „Premio Abbiati“ in Italy and „Premio Edison“ in Holland.
Various CDs have been released by ECM RECORDS, among other “Plainte Calme” featuring French composers and recently featuring Schumann (Kreisleriana) and Heinz Holliger (Partita, as well as a CD together with the violinist Carolin Widmann dedicated to F. Schubert.
The most important projects in the past season were spectacular concerts at the Salzburg Summer Festival as Soloist and Conductor of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Beethoven Cycles with the violinist Christian Tetzlaff, various successful tours with the Camerata Salzburg trough Germany, Spain, Italy and Switzerland, stupendous performances with the Orchestra da Camera di Mantova in the whole of Europe, tours with the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
Highlights of the season 2015/2016 will be his Residency at the NDR Symphony Orchestra, a US-Tour with Nicolas Altstaedt, a tour through Spain with Orquesta Sinfónica de Euskadi as well as a cycle of Beethoven‘s 5 concertos for piano with the Munich Chamber Orchestra. In 2016, his new CD recording of Schumann’s concert pieces with Heinz Holliger and the WDR Symphony Orchestra will be released.
Born in Trier (Germany) Alexander Lonquich studied with Astrid Schmidt-Neuhaus, Paul Badura-Skoda, Andreji Jasinski and Ilonka Deckers and started his international career winning the First Prize at the International Piano Competition „Antonio Casagrande“ in Terni, Italy at the age of sixteen.