Over het album

Their repertoire here ranges widely: alongside well-known but re-imagined classical music pieces, such as the “Passacaglia” (on a theme of Handel) by the Norwegian composer Johan

Halvorsen, or the breakneck “La Ronde des Lutins” by Bazzini, the focal point of “Stradihumpa” consists of four original compositions. Jörg Duda from Munich is in effect a composer-in-residence for Hofmeir, and he has contributed the very classical and virtuosic “Duetto”. Christof Dienz’s “Concertino vom Lande” (Countryside Concertino) presents Austrian foibles and faibles: the stuttering first movement portrays a teetering tractor driver. The next movement “Am Abend dann” (And then in the evening) relishes evening boredom in artistic terms. That tedium can only be broken by watching television together. So “Beim Fernsehen” (Around the television) quotes programme theme tunes and advertising jingles from Austrian TV, darting from one to another with the stylized restlessness of channelzapping. “1 1=3: The Abstraction Of Beauty” is a work by the young and hugely promising composer Florian Willeitner, a hymn-like chorale is its starting point, and from there a work of almost symphonic proportions evolves, exploring all the technical capacities and pitch extremes of the instruments. This piece does not shy away from drawing its inspiration from both jazz and hip hop – and from Prokofiev and John Williams.

The folk-dance “Unterkagner Ländler” is by Jan Koetsier, one-time conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Three jazz pieces round off the album: “Miniature” and “Schnabulescu Bandini” by the Austrian polymath Georg Breinschmid were originally written for violin and double bass. In João Bosco’s “Latin Lover”, the violin provides a harmonic accompaniment for the tuba, and then shines in a final solo improvisation.