Wolfgang Birtel

Overcoming the boundaries between 'serious' and entertaining music was what mattered to the musician Eduard Pütz (1911-2000). His compositions therefore include stylistic features of jazz and pop musi...

Who would have thought that ragtime would enjoy another renaissance! But more than 50 years after the death of its main representative, Scott Joplin, the film 'The Sting' has made this once popular st...

Although the Würzburg court musician and violin soloist Joseph Küffner (1776-1856) had to deal with military music for professional reasons, he had also written a series of symphonies, orchestral work...

Songs Without Words' - that's what Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847) called his lyrical piano pieces, romantic miniatures in which the composer wanted to 'sing' on the keyboard instrument. With...

Any violinist who hears the name Sitt nowadays will probably just think of the author of studies and exercises that have long been a familiar feature in instrumental lessons. Of course the Prague viol...

The latest addition to the Violinissimo series, La donna è mobile, presents well-known opera melodies in 25 arrangements for violin and piano. Suitable for intermediate level violinists, the repertoir...

Fritz Kreisler's (1875-1962) collection Klassische Manuskripte written by the violin virtuoso around the turn of the century who pretended they were transcriptions of movements by old masters such as...

In her music, the composer Johanna Senfter, student of Max Reger in Leipzig, devoted herself entirely to the late Romanticism. While her music had been regarded as old-fashioned for a long time, the p...

On 11 August 2011 it is fifty years since the death of the composer Johanna Senfter from Oppenheim who actually was a trained violinist for she had studied with renowned violinists at the Hoch Conserv...

Johanna Senfter (1879-1961) was a pupil of Max Reger.Beginning with an expressive violin theme in a densely packed, 'Brahms-like' piano setting, the classical four-movement work centres around two cap...

The Vienna-born Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962) felt at home in the coffee houses of his home town where he not only met the cultural elite of his time but also absorbed the entertainment and folk music of...

Josef Suk (1824-1935) was a bit in the shadow of the two famous Czech composers Antonín Dvorák and Bedrích Smetana. This affected Suk especially because Dvorák was also his father-in-law, a fact that...

Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908), undoubtedly, is one of the most important and most successful violin virtuosos of the second half of the 19th century and has become immortal through his virtuoso and hi...

Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908), undoubtedly, is one of the most important and most successful violin virtuosos of the second half of the 19th century and has become immortal through his virtuoso and hi...

Stanley Weiner (1925-1951) is mainly remembered as a performer: a solo violinist. His musical career was predetermined for his father served as assistant principal violinist to the Baltimore Symphony...

'Nobody knows the music of the whole world better than Monsieur Saint-Saëns', Claude Debussy praised his fellow composer, and there are only few who left such a comprehensive oeuvre covering all genre...

'Nobody knows the music of the whole world better than Monsieur Saint-Saëns', Claude Debussy praised his fellow composer, and there are only few who left such a comprehensive oeuvre covering all genre...

With this double concerto, the Reger pupil Johanna Senfter (1879-1961) is entirely in the tradition of Antonio Vivaldi and J.S. Bach, although she combines the concerto form with the classical four-mo...

With this double concerto, the Reger pupil Johanna Senfter (1879-1961) is entirely in the tradition of Antonio Vivaldi and J.S. Bach, although she combines the concerto form with the classical four-mo...

The reputation of the Bohemian composer Zdenek Fibich (1850-1900) has always been somewhat overshadowed by that of Bedrich Smetana and Antonín Dvorák. This is a pity, for Fibich, though he died young,...

Anyone who hears the name of Scott Joplin immediately thinks of the ragtime which is inseparably connected with this composer, particularly since the film The Sting has triggered a real renaissance of...

The Hindemith pupil Harald Genzmer (1909-2007) worked with virtually all music genres and composed works for many, even unusual instruments (such as the trautonium). He also wrote compositions for the...

The composer, violinist and educationalist Louis Spohr (1784-1859) caused a sensation as a child already: At the age of 5, he took his first violin lessons and at the age of 15 was employed as chamber...