Mozart ContemporariesMozart Contemporaries18th Century Music for Bassoon

Carmen Mainer Martín bassoonVioleta Mur cello

Enrique Escartín Ara piano

Mozart ContemporariesThis album presents a selection of works written by three composers of the same generation: all three were born in the 1750s and wrote music in the pure Classical idiom of eighteenth-century Europe, including pieces in which the spotlight falls on the bassoon. The immortal Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was of course the leading composer of his day, an undisputed touchstone of the aesthetics of the Enlightenment, of that Age of Reason during which Europe witnessed the birth of mankind’s highest ideals and which is reflected in music of striking clarity, transparency and optimism.

Mozart is the glue binding our chosen repertoire together, in fact, since our starting point for this programme was his Sonata for bassoon and cello in B flat, KV292. Cast in three movements, it was written in around 1775 – a year after the Bassoon Concerto in B flat, KV191 – when Mozart was not yet twenty. Notable for its sheer simplicity and beauty, it was dedicated to the music-loving nobleman Thaddäus Wolfgang von Dürnitz, an amateur composer and occasional pianist and bassoonist.

A few years later (around 1780), Dürnitz published his own collection of six sonatas for bassoon and piano (fortepiano at the time), works written in an idiom which is highly individual but still indebted to the Classical aesthetic. In his sonatas Dürnitz explores the technical capabilities of the eighteenth-century Classical bassoon, which had evolved from its predecessor, the Baroque bassoon, thanks to a series of significant refinements to the way in which the instrument was made. Fundamental to these was the addition of keys that enabled an expansion of its technical capabilities, including, for example, an extended range, especially in the upper register.

Dürnitz made the most of this aspect in his six sonatas, as can be heard in the four recorded here, in which the bassoon line rarely descends into the lower register but frequently ventures into the upper. This inclusion of primarily high melodic lines was a great novelty at the time, and even twenty-first-century performers and listeners, used to the extremes of register employed in contemporary music, may be surprised by the unusual heights to which the bassoon often climbs in these sonatas. It seems

Mozart Contemporaries18th Century Music for Bassoon

François Devienne 1759-1803Duo Concertant Op.3 No.2 in G for bassoon and cello1. Allegro 3’452. Rondo 3’15

Thaddäus Wolfgang Von Dürnitz 1756-1807Sonata No.1 in B flat for bassoon and piano3. Allegro maestoso 5’074. Rondo – Allegro 3’25

Sonata No.5 in G for bassoon and piano5. Allegro ma ben posato 3’386. Rondo – Allegretto 4’41

François Devienne Duo Concertant Op.3 No.1 in F for bassoon and cello7. Allegro moderato 4’088. Rondo 2’50

Thaddäus Wolfgang Von Dürnitz Sonata No.6 in C for bassoon and piano9. Allegro 3’4510. Rondo – Allegro 3’30

Sonata No.3 in G for bassoon and piano11. Adagio – Allegro 6’2612. Tempo di Menuetto, ma un

poco Allegro 3’47

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-1791Sonata KV292 in B flat for bassoon and cello13. Allegro 3’5214. Andante 3’0115. Rondo (Allegro) 3’01

Carmen Mainer Martín bassoon · Violeta Mur cello · Enrique Escartín Ara piano

Recording: 2-3 September 2019, Diputación Provincial de Huesca, Huesca, SpainProducer, Recording Engineer and Editing: Gonzalo Noqué (Noqué Studio)Equipment: Rens Heijnis modified Neumann U89 and Schoeps CMC64 microphones, Merging Horus preamplifier and converter, Pyramix DAWCover & artists’ photos: Alberto Pérez Puyalp & © 2021 Brilliant Classics

natural enough to suppose that Dürnitz, a passionate amateur player, wanted to demonstrate the expressive potential of this register in his works and challenge other bassoonists (as well, perhaps, as himself) by writing melodic lines that pushed the instrument to its upper limits. His sonatas are also typical of the chamber repertoire in that the solo and accompaniment functions constantly alternate between bassoon and piano, just as they do between bassoon and cello in the Mozart sonata.

The last of our composers is François Devienne, who wrote his six Duos Concertants Op.3 for two bassoons in around 1782. These are also sometimes performed by bassoon and cello, a choice possibly influenced by Mozart’s KV292, and indeed one of the reasons we have opted for the bassoon-cello pairing here is to keep that sense of coherence with his Sonata in B flat. The other reason for our choice is the undeniable richness of tone and colour offered by this combination of two low instruments. © Carmen Mainer MartínTranslation by Susannah Howe

Mozart ContemporariesEn Mozart Contemporaries presentamos algunos de los trabajos de la generación de compositores que, nacidos en la década de 1750, desarrollaron su producción musical a través del más puro lenguaje del Clasicismo europeo del siglo XVIII, otorgando al fagot un rol relevante. El inmortal Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart se revela como el músico clave de esta época, referente indiscutible de la estética del Siglo de las Luces, de esta Edad de la Razón en que Europa ve nacer los ideales más elevados del ser humano y que se refleja en una música profundamente esperanzadora, clara y transparente.

La figura de Mozart va a actuar como aglutinante del repertorio escogido, ya que se ha partido de su Sonata para fagot y violonchelo en Si bemol Mayor KV292 para construir el resto del programa. Esta sonata articulada en tres movimientos fue escrita hacia 1775, un año después de la composición del Concierto para fagot y orquesta en Si bemol Mayor KV191, cuando Mozart contaba con apenas veinte años. El diletante Thaddäus Wolfgang Von Dürnitz, noble, melómano, compositor e intérprete ocasional de piano y fagot, fue la persona a quien Mozart dedicó esta pieza, de una gran sencillez y belleza.

Por su parte, Dürnitz va a publicar algunos años más tarde (en torno a 1780) sus seis sonatas para fagot y piano (fortepiano en la época), en las que explora con un lenguaje muy personal, pero siempre deudor de la estética clásica, las posibilidades del fagot en aquel momento, el fagot clásico; este instrumento del siglo XVIII es el resultado de una serie de notables modificaciones en la factura de su antecesor, el fagot barroco, consistentes fundamentalmente en el añadido de llaves que van a posibilitar un aumento de las posibilidades técnicas como, por ejemplo, la ampliación del registro, sobre todo en el ámbito agudo.

Esto es algo en lo que Dürnitz profundizará en sus seis sonatas y que se puede escuchar en las cuatro obras grabadas para Mozart Contemporaries, ya que la línea melódica del fagot desciende raramente hacia el registro grave y, sin embargo, se

Carmen Mainer Martín graduated from the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Aragón (CSMA), where she studied with Juan Sapiña; she has also worked with David Tomàs, Sergio Azzolini, Laurent Lefèvre, Josep Borrás, Johannes Schwarz, Fany Maselli, Amrei Liebold, Gustavo Núñez and Stefano Canuti, in Spain, Italy, France and Austria. In Spain she has worked with such ensembles as the Joven Orquesta de Euskal Herria (EGO), Joven Orquesta Internacional Oviedo Filarmonía (JOIOF) and Orquesta de Cámara del Maestrazgo. In 2011 and 2019 she was invited by the Académie Musicale de Villecroze to attend masterclasses given by Sergio Azzolini and Laurent Lefèvre respectively. Carmen took part in the 2018 International Ensemble Modern Academy master course at the Klangspuren Festival in Schwaz and in the 2019 impuls Festival in Graz.

In France, she works with various different orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the wind quintet Le Concert impromptu, contemporary music ensemble Écoute and the Orchestre Symphonique d’Orléans. In 2017 she and her sister, flautist Ana Mainer Martín, founded the Gavarnie Ensemble, and together they regularly give concerts in both France and Spain. In parallel with her chamber music work, Carmen also teaches bassoon at the Maurice Ravel Conservatory in Paris and is involved with the Paris Philharmonie’s DÉMOS outreach project. In 2015 she won the Performance Prize awarded annually

aventura con audacia en el agudo. Este desarrollo de líneas melódicas generalmente agudas constituye una gran novedad para la época; incluso desde el punto de vista de los artistas y oyentes del siglo XXI, en el que la música contemporánea ha acostumbrado a la audiencia a límites mucho más extremos, el registro en el que a menudo se mueve el fagot en estas sonatas puede sorprender por ser inusualmente agudo. Se puede intuir que Dürnitz, apasionado amateur de este instrumento, quisiera reflejar en sus composiciones las posibilidades expresivas de este registro y desafiar a los fagotistas (y, posiblemente, a sí mismo) proponiendo este tipo de líneas melódicas en el límite del instrumento de la época.

Finalmente, las sonatas de Dürnitz constituyen un ejemplo paradigmático del repertorio camerístico por la constante alternancia de roles solista y acompañante entre el fagot y el piano, de la misma manera que sucede en la Sonata en Si bemol mayor para fagot y violonchelo de Mozart.

Por último, François Devienne escribirá en torno a 1782 sus seis Dúos Concertantes Op.3 para dos fagotes, que también han sido interpretados por fagot y violonchelo, quizás por influencia de la formación de la ya citada Sonata de Mozart. En Mozart Contemporaries se ha querido mantener la combinación de fagot y violonchelo por dos razones: la primera, para mantener la coherencia con la formación de la Sonata en Si bemol de Mozart y, la segunda, por la incuestionable riqueza tímbrica y cromática de esta asociación de instrumentos graves.© Carmen Mainer Martín

Violeta Mur began her cello studies in Huesca, with Ángela Gómez at the Conservatorio Profesional de Música “Antonio Viñuales Gracia”, obtaining distinctions in both cello and composition. She then went on to study at the CSMA with Fernando Arias and the Cuarteto Quiroga. Later, she travelled to Austria to continue her training with Mathias Johansen and Beatriz Blanco at the Vorarlberger Landeskonservatorium. During this period she took part, in collaboration with various chamber ensembles, in the Pforte concert series in Feldkirch and the Frauenschichten Festival in Hittisau. Between 2016 and 2019 she taught cello at Huesca’s Conservatorio Profesional. She has participated in masterclasses with Claudio Bohórquez, Stephan Forck, László Fenyo, Jens-Peter Maintz, Tristan Cornut, Michail Dmochovsky, Danjulo Ishizaka and Xavier Gagnepain, among others. Her interest in early music has also led her to study Baroque cello with Gaetano Nasillo. She is currently working towards two master’s degrees: one in chamber music at the CSMA with Luis Fernando Pérez, Marta Gulyás, André Cebrián and the Cuarteto Quiroga, the other in performance with Christoph Henkel at the Musikhochschule Trossingen.

by the Colegio de España in Paris in cooperation with Spain’s National Institute of Performing Arts and Music (INAEM – part of the Ministry of Culture and Sport), and this enabled her to record her first solo album: Music for bassoon and piano (Brilliant Classics, 2018).

Carmen has a master’s in music and musicology from the Sorbonne in Paris and a degree in history of art from the University of Zaragoza.

Enrique Escartín Ara studied at the CSMA, specialising in piano with Iván Cítera and chamber music with the Cuarteto Casals. Since 2007 he has taught at the CSMA, working with students of bassoon, flute, trombone and singing. Under the auspices of the Erasmus European Mobility Programme, he taught at Berlin’s University of the Arts (UdK) in 2014, and at the Freiburg University of Music in 2020. In 2018 he earned a master’s degree in musical research and performance from the Universidad Internacional de Valencia.

Many thanks to Conservatorio Profesional de Música de Huesca “Antonio Viñuales Gracia” and Diputación Provincial de Huesca (Spain)