"All round this is an impressive disc. It is surely a must for anybody with an interest in the bass trombone. Improbable as it may seem, it would also be good if the disc could also find an audience outside of that tiny group. Whatever sort of instrument Stefan Schulz plays, his solo work deserves to be heard purely for its musical qualities. He is a major talent and I look forward to his next recital recording." (Gavin Dixon, Music Web International).
A member of the Berlin Philharmonic since 2002, Stefan Schulz is one of the world's leading bass trombonists. As implied by the title of this recording - his first solo disc -, it is a recital programme recorded live at a concert in the Chamber Music Hall of the Berliner Philharmonie in 2008. The programme has been chosen to emphasize the various facets of the bass trombone and in particular its ability to play music of a songful character. This certainly applies to Brahms' Four Serious Songs, as well as the cantabile works by Lebedev and Sulek which both seem to point to the sonorities of Romanticism; but it is equally true of Jan Sandström's wonderfully simple Song to Lotta, appearing as an encore. To balance the programme Schulz has included a work by Daniel Schnyder, the New York-based composer and saxophonist with whom he collaborates closely. subZERO, Schnyder's concerto for bass trombone, places great emphasis on virtuosity and reaches out in the direction of jazz. Here performed in the composer's own chamber version (for the first time available on disc), this virtuoso composition also provides variety in terms of sound as it includes marimba, percussion and violin as well as piano.
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