Lorenz Duftschmid

Last updated April 20, 2019

Lorenz Duftschmid (born 1964 in Linz, Austria) is an Austrian viol player and conductor.^[1]

Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria. It is in the north centre of Austria, approximately 30 kilometres south of the Czech border, on both sides of the River Danube. The population of the city is 204,846, and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about 789,811.

Austria, officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in Central Europe comprising 9 federated states. Its capital, largest city and one of nine states is Vienna. Austria has an area of 83,879 km² (32,386 sq mi), a population of nearly 9 million people and a nominal GDP of $477 billion. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The terrain is highly mountainous, lying within the Alps; only 32% of the country is below 500 m (1,640 ft), and its highest point is 3,798 m (12,461 ft). The majority of the population speaks local Bavarian dialects as their native language, and German in its standard form is the country's official language. Other regional languages are Hungarian, Burgenland Croatian, and Slovene.

Viol one of a family of bowed, fretted and stringed instruments

The viol, viola da gamba[ˈvjɔːla da ˈɡamba], or (informally) gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch of each of the strings. Frets on the viol are usually made of gut, tied on the fingerboard around the instrument's neck, to enable the performer to stop the strings more cleanly. Frets improve consistency of intonation and lend the stopped notes a tone that better matches the open strings. Viols first appeared in Spain in the mid to late 15th century and were most popular in the Renaissance and Baroque (1600-1750) periods. Early ancestors include the Arabic rebab and the medieval European vielle, but later, more direct possible ancestors include the Venetian viole and the 15th- and 16th-century Spanish vihuela, a 6-course plucked instrument tuned like a lute that looked like but was quite distinct from the 4-course guitar.

Biography

Born to a musical family, Duftschmid began studying music in an early age, and enjoyed the opportunity to learn from the great masters of the viol, such as Jordi Savall. He studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland.

Jordi Savall i Bernadet is a Catalan conductor and viol player. He has been one of the major figures in the field of Western early music since the 1970s, largely responsible for popularizing the viol family of instruments in contemporary performance and recording. His characteristic repertoire features medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music, although he has occasionally ventured into the Classical and even the Romantic periods.

The Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (SCB) is a music academy and research institution located in Basel, Switzerland, that focuses on early music and historically informed performance.

Basel is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine. Basel is Switzerland's third-most-populous city with about 180,000 inhabitants.

Duftschmid is the director of the ensemble Armonico Tributo Austria, besides his solo career as a gamba player. He is also a member of Jordi Savall's ensembles Hesperion XX and La Capella Reial de Catalunya.

La Capella Reial de Catalunya is a group of soloist singers with the aim of making the repertoire of Catalan historical music and, by extension, that of Spanish and other music widely known throughout the world. The group was formed in Barcelona in 1987 by its conductor Jordi Savall. La Capella Reial de Catalunya often performs with Le Concert des Nations, a period instrument group also founded and conducted by Savall.

Duftschmid is an expert in the field of Baroque music, and excels in the performance of Renaissance and early Classical repertory as well.

The Baroque is a highly ornate and often extravagant style of architecture, music, painting, sculpture and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th until the mid-18th century. It followed the Renaissance style and preceded the Rococo and Neoclassical styles. It was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture, art and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well. The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, deep colour, grandeur and surprise to achieve a sense of awe. The style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome, then spread rapidly to France, northern Italy, Spain and Portugal, then to Austria and southern Germany. By the 1730s, it had evolved into an even more flamboyant style, called rocaille or Rococo, which appeared in France and central Europe until the mid to late 18th century.

The Renaissance is a period in European history, covering the span between the 14th and 17th centuries and marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. The traditional view focuses more on the early modern aspects of the Renaissance and argues that it was a break from the past, but many historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an extension of the middle ages.

The Classical period was an era of classical music between roughly 1730 and 1820.

Instruments

Duftschmid owns and plays on the following viols:

Gasparo da Salo (ca. 1580)
Jakobus Stainer (Absam-Tirol, 1679)
Nicolas Bertrand (Paris, 1699)
Antony Stephan Posch (Vienna, 1717)

Jacob Stainer was the earliest and best known Austrian and Germanic luthier. His violins were sought after by famous 17th and 18th century musicians and composers including Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and George Simon-Lohein.

Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an area of 105 square kilometres and an official estimated population of 2,140,526 residents as of 1 January 2019. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts.

Vienna is the federal capital and largest city of Austria, and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primate city, with a population of about 1.9 million, and its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was the largest German-speaking city in the world, and before the splitting of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I, the city had 2 million inhabitants. Today, it has the second largest number of German speakers after Berlin. Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city is located in the eastern part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region. Along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In July 2017 it was moved to the list of World Heritage in Danger.

Discography

Duftschmid took part in more than 70 recordings. To mention some of the prominent releases:

Johannes Schenck: Les Fantaisies bisarres de la Goutte (CPO)
Georg Muffat: Nobilis Juventus (CPO)
Marin Marais: Pieces de Caractère (CPO)
Johann Joseph Fux: Concentus Musico-Instrumentalis, Vol. 1 (Arcana)
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer: La Margarita (Arcana)
Telemann: Viola di Gamba (Arcana)

Johannes Schenck was a Dutch musician and composer.

Classic Produktion Osnabrück is a record label founded in 1986 by Georg Ortmann and several others. Its declared mission is to fill niches in the recorded classical repertory, with an emphasis on romantic, late romantic and 20th-century music. The label also aims to release complete cycles of recordings, such as complete sets of symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and so forth. It is the house label of online retailer jpc.

Georg Muffat was a Baroque composer and organist. He is most well known for the remarkably articulate and informative performance directions printed along with his collections of string pieces Florilegium Primum and Florilegium Secundum in 1695 and 1698.

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Marin Marais was a French composer and viol player. He studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully, often conducting his operas, and with master of the bass viol Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe for six months. In 1676 he was hired as a musician to the royal court of Versailles and was moderately successful there, being appointed in 1679 as ordinaire de la chambre du roy pour la viole, a title he kept until 1725.

Jean de Sainte-Colombe was a French composer and violist. Sainte-Colombe was a celebrated master of the viola da gamba. He is credited with adding the seventh string (AA) on the bass viol.

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Vittorio Ghielmi is an Italian musician, conductor, composer. Compared by critics to Jasha Heifetz (“Diapason”) for his virtuosity, and described as “An Alchemist of sound” for the intensity and versatility of his musical interpretations, Vittorio Ghielmi attracted notice while still very young for his new approach to the viola da gamba and to the sound of early music repertoire. He is Professor for viola da gamba and Head of the Institut für Alte Musik at the Mozarteum Universität Salzburg and Visiting Professor at the Royal College of London. He is graduate at the Università Cattolica di Milano.

Sophie Watillon was a Belgian viol player who specialized in Baroque music. She was born in Namur, Belgium to a musical family. During her young life, the viola da gamba-soloist gained international fame with refined and sensitive solo interpretations of Early Music and Baroque compositions for viola da gamba.

The Ensemble À Deux Violes Esgales, stylized on their website as A 2 Violes Esgales, was formed in 1984 by the gambists Sylvia Abramowicz and Jonathan Dunford. The group has recorded a dozen albums mostly for Accord, Universal Music France. Based in Paris they tour the world with varied programs from recitals to a larger group with singers.

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August Wenzinger (1905–1996) was a prominent cellist, viol player, conductor, teacher, and music scholar from Basel, Switzerland. He was a pioneer of historically informed performance, both as a master of the viola da gamba and as a conductor of Baroque orchestral music and operas.

Michel Bernstein was a French musical producer and founder of several record labels.

Rolf Lislevand, is a Norwegian performer of Early music specialising on lute, vihuela, baroque guitar and theorbo.

Juan de Urrede or Juan de Urreda was a Flemish singer and composer active in Spain in the service of the Duke of Alba and King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. He was born Johannes de Wreede in Bruges.

Alison Crum, is an English viol player.

Imke David is a German viol player, author, Professor and Ensemble-Member.

Jonathan Dunford is an American violist specialising in the baroque repertoire.

References

↑ Adelson, Robert. "Biography: Lorenz Duftschmid". Allmusic . Retrieved 5 April 2010.

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[1] Adelson, Robert. "Biography: Lorenz Duftschmid". Allmusic . Retrieved 5 April 2010.