tabea zimmermann - viola: artists - review - | karsten witt musikmanagement gmbh

Tabea Zimmermann as Artist in Residence at the Kunstfest Weimar

THÜRINGISCHE LANDESZEITUNG, 14/9/2008 --- Among many noteworthy artists, Tabea Zimmermann must be highlighted: a galactic violist, as from another world. Music of the spheres.

THÜRINGISCHE LANDESZEITUNG, 14/9/2008 --- So bittersweet can the sad moments sound, celebrated by Tabea Zimmermann (viola), Stella Doufexis (mezzo-soprano) and Hartmut Höll (piano). (...) In composing the Sonata for viola and piano (1975), Dmitri Shostakovich, already ravaged by disease, departed for death. Tabea Zimmermann dedicated her innermost to this fatally beautiful work. (...) She spreaded wastefully her overabundant fundus of sounds as Artist in Residence, and her truthful performances made it so difficult to take leave of her.

THÜRINGISCHE LANDESZEITUNG, 7/9/2008 --- The Kunstfest Weimar has a new star. The outstanding violist promises exclusively musical highlights in her programme including contemporary and classical chamber music and the artist-in-residence finale on 14 September. ...more

Chamber music recitals with Hartmut Höll in May 2008

SIEGENER ZEITUNG, 30/6/2008 --- Her sonority is striking. Low and earthy, powerful and sonorous (...). Later this will become delicate and soft, will crackle scratchily, will pose questions, will be disturbingly strange. Tabea Zimmermann does not merely play the viola, she lives this instrument and demonstrates what is possible.

SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG, 1/6/2008 --- Tabea Zimmermann and Hartmut Höll performed them [Robert Schumann, Fairytale pictures op.113] with magical beauty. Particularly impressive was the third movement, an outrageously virtuosic performance by Tabea Zimmermann like a scurrying spook (...) and of course, the last movement „langsam und mit melancholischen Ausdruck" [slow and with melancolic expression]. That was the paragon of the Romantic period and of the perfect art of soulful duet performance. (...) Tabea Zimmermann performed it [Shostakovich's Sonata op. 147] enchantinglyl. (...) As in the concerts with Brahms and Schubert, Hartmut Höll was again the ideal partner.

Concert with the LSO under Sir Colin Davis in London (Berlioz: Harold in Italy)

THE GUARDIAN, 17/12/2007 --- His [Colin Davis] account of the dramatic symphony Harold in Italy, with the solo viola played by the lustrous-toned Tabea Zimmermann, was drawn in bold, clear outlines (...) Zimmermann is the kind of self-reliant soloist Davis can rely on to make their contributions count with the minimum of fuss while he shapes the bigger details. Whether taking the spotlight in the first movement, adding her discursive commentary to the Pilgrims' March in the second, or making the briefest of appearances before the final Brigands' Orgy reaches its climax, she judged it all perfectly.

THE INDEPENDENT, 17/12/2007 --- An equally beautiful but on this occasion more seductive voice - that of Tabea Zimmermann's viola - has come to inhabit the Bryonic world of Berlioz's Harold in Italy so completely that it is hard now to imagine anyone else playing the piece. From the moment her big mahogany sound stepped across the craggy threshold of the opening mountainscape it was clear that this Childe Harold had already found himself. How well she knows her place in the great scheme of this piece. Her hazy arpeggiations in the second movement's "March of pilgrims" (...) were perfection, while the Abruzzian serenade of the third brought out her chamber-music skills (...).

THE TIMES, 14/12/2007 --- Zimmermann's versatile musicality, her equal command of the lyrical sigh and the urgent thrust, guaranteed extra delight. How those spectral arpeggios in the Pilgrim's March shivered...

CLASSICALSOURCE, December 2007 --- What set this performance apart was the quality of the collaboration with Tabea Zimmermann. She and Davis have performed the piece together previously and indeed the LSO Live recording is excellent. However, this was even better: now, Zimmermann does not simply play the piece, she becomes Harold. (...) she has the priceless advantage of being a great soloist, fully able to ride the orchestral storm, as well as an instinctive chamber player. ...more

Tabea Zimmermann at the Festival Alpenklassik in Bad Reichenhall

REICHENHALLER TAGBLATT, 15/8/2007 --- The audience of the Alpenklassik was granted an outstanding concert on Saturday evening. The world's leading solo violist Tabea Zimmermann played on the instrument, that the 17-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven played in the court chapel Bonn. (...) Tabea Zimmermann charmed "magical sounds" of thrilling beauty out of this instrument. You cannot praise her sufficiently for her performance, art of phrasing, incredible bowing, her musicality and the mastering of her instrument.

German premiere: „Monh" by George Lentz, March 2007

WESTDEUTSCHE ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG BOCHUM, 12/3/2007 --- Tabea Zimmermann's performance breathed, lived and turned the very sophisticated compositional concept into a sensuous listening experience.

ONRUHR, 10/3/2007 --- The violist impressed with her natural, effortless performance in spite of most difficult technical and intonational requirements.

KÖLNISCHE RUNDSCHAU, 12/2/2007 --- During the sixth movement of this incredible work, she displayed her mastery in its entirety. In the superlative tempo of the "Presto con sordino", not a single nuance was lost, while in the "Andante Cantabile" the viola's austere beauty of sound was wonderfully accentuated. Yet she drew the fine, tender register, too, with exquisite subtlety, which entered the listeners' ears like silk thread; first in Stravinsky's "Elegie" for Solo Viola. Hindemith's Sonata for Viola and Piano (op. 25 no. 4) finally crowned the programme. In perfect accord, the duo bubbled over with spiritedness as if Hindemith's tricky rhythms were pure child's play.

FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG, 20/5/2006 --- This was followed by a splendid performance of Paul Hindemith's Sonata for viola solo op.25 No.1 (1922) befalling the audience, of which the experimental fourth movement was particularly memorable. ...more

NEUE ZÜRCHER ZEITUNG, 29/9/2005 --- It was unbelievable, which variety of expressions the soloist drew from the colourful score, how differenciated her part became, how she phrased the great lines and still took great care of every small detail.

FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU, 22/9/2005 --- When Tabea Zimmermann performs as violist in a chamber music ensemble, the works begin to shine from within.

Photo: Marco Borggreve