CD 98
Musical Instruments in the Ferdinandeum 5
Jakob Stainer (ca. 1617-1683) is one of the most renowned artists that the Tyrol has ever produced. Musicians and museums all over the world regard the instruments made by the master born in Absam as their special treasures. As early as during the lifetime of the „father of the German violin,“ his instruments were in great demand as the embodiment of the beauty of Baroque sound and were worth their weight in gold. Contemporaries described him as the most famous violin maker, whose fame had spread as far as Spain, where he furnished several instruments for the royal court. Jakob Stainer, who died in his native town utterly impoverished and demented, built a violin just one year before his death that is in the collection of the Tiroler Landesmuseum today. This instrument, which the Tyrolean Stainer scholar Walter Senn called the crowning achievement of the Absam master’s production and one of his most beautiful and best preserved violins, is presented in a premiere recording on this CD. However, Jakob Stainer’s last violin is not preserved entirely in its original state. Changes were made to the instrument not because it was damaged but because they were called for by the increased demands on bowed string instruments created by the tonal ideal of the new classical music style. On this CD the master instrument by Jakob Stainer is therefore not introduced with compositions dating from the lifetime of its creator but with violin sonatas by the Tyrolean composer Ignaz Anton Ladurner (1766- 1839) that do more justice to the changed form of the instrument.
Track 5, 3:36
Sonate III in G-major
Allegro grazioso