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Violinist Arabella Steinbacher was only eight years old when she began playing her first Mozart violin concerto (in G major). As the legendary pianist Arthur Schnabel once mentioned, Mozart’s piano sonatas are too easy for children, yet too difficult for adults. In Ms. Steinbacher’s words: when playing Mozart, one must always make sure that the performance is powerful, yet never aggressive, and that the sound always remains beautifully pure and almost angelic.
And since then, the Violin Concerto in G major has remained an underlying theme throughout her career. Arabella Steinbacher PENTATONE’s Artist of the Season January to June 2014 has performed the work on many important occasions in her life. It was also the piece that led to her acceptance as the youngest student of Ana Chumachenko, when aged only nine. Yet up until now, her performance of the concertos had not appeared on CD, despite regular requests from listeners. During the recording of the concerto, Ms. Steinbacher said: “I am glad it can finally be recorded now. Mozart connects me to my childhood and has opened many doors for me.”
Equally exciting is the collaboration between Ms. Steinbacher and the Festival Strings Lucerne. As she said: “When I play Mozart, I actually prefer playing without a conductor, as it is very much chamber music and the Lucerne Festival Strings are accustomed to playing without a conductor. It is just much more exciting to communicate directly with the orchestra. Everyone can see me, everyone is very close to me. During the recording, we listened carefully to one another, and it was very harmonious.”
Finally satisfying a long-standing demand, it is now time for Ms. Steinbacher’s Mozart. Released on PENTATONE, Mozart - Violin Concertos Nos. 3, 4 & 5 is available world-wide as of May 1, 2014.
About ARABELLA STEINBACHER
Violinist Arabella Steinbacher has firmly established herself as one of today’s leading violinists in the international concert scene, performing with the world’s major orchestras.
Recording exclusively for PENTATONE, her diverse and wide-ranging repertoire nowadays includes more than 30 concertos for the violin. In addition to all major concertos from the Classical and Romantic periods, she also performs concertos by Barber, Bartók, Berg, Glazunov, Khatchaturian, Milhaud, Prokofiev, Schnittke, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Szymanowski, Hindemith, and Hartmann, as well as Sofia Gubaidulina’s Offertorium. Her various recordings have received the “Choc du Mois” from Le Monde de la Musique, two “ECHO Klassik Awards”, two “German Record Critics’ Awards” (= Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik), as well as the “Editor’s Choice Award” from Gramophone magazine.
Please visit the PENTATONE website for more information about Arabella Steinbacher.
About PENTATONE
PENTATONE (pentatonemusic.com) is a Dutch classical music label specializing in high-end, multichannel surround-sound recordings, founded in 2001 by three former executives of Philips Classics. PENTATONE’s catalogue includes recordings by conductors Kent Nagano, Marek Janowski, Sir Neville Marriner, Mikhail Pletnev, Sir Colin Davis, Yakov Kreizberg, Simon Murphy, and Lawrence Foster; instrumentalists Julia Fischer, Mari Kodama, Arabella Steinbacher, Nikolai Lugansky, Nareh Arghamanyan, Martin Helmchen, and Sa Chen; and orchestras such as the Russian National Orchestra, Wiener Symphoniker, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, New Dutch Academy, and the Bolshoi Opera.
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