Musical Greetings from Vienna

Violinist Daniel Froschauer and double bass player Michael Bladerer have recorded this lovely duet recital from the (empty) Brahms Saal of the Musikverein in Vienna. Both performers play in the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and this video was originally made for the Vienna Philharmonic Society, an American-based society raising funds for the orchestra.

First the duet play's Reinhold Gliere's 1909 Suite for Violin and Cello (in a version for violin and double bass). A pupil of  Sergei Taneyev and Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Gliere turned into one of the great survivors. He never visited Western Europe after 1917, and during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s as the last genuine representative of the pre-revolutionary national Russian school he seemed to be beyond reproach.

Violinist Daniel Froschauer then plays music from Bach's unaccompanied Sonata in G minor, written less than 10 years before Froschauer's 1727 Stradivarius violin was made. Double Bass player Michael Bladerer performs music by Bottesini, performed in memory of Bladerer's teacher, Ludwig Streicher, a former principal double bass player with the Vienna Philharmonic who would have been 100 this year and who played it in the Brahms Saal on his 70th birthday.