Luogo e data di registrazione		-
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Recording Supervision		-
	Edizione LP		TELEFUNKEN - 6.42527 AP - (1 LP - durata 47' 59") - (p) 1981 - Analogico
	Originale LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		-
	Note		-

David Funck's "Adagio and Allemande" come from the well-known Suite for Four Viols by this Czech Renaissance master. The performance of the music on four double-basses - the closest descendant of the viol in the modern 'family' of stringed instruments - gives the listener an idea of the original sound. Bernhard Alt's "Suite for Four Double-Basses" was the first original quartet to be composed for this unusual ensemble. Four members of the already widely celebrated double-bass section of the Berlin Philharmonic gave the Suite its first performance in 1933. The great success of this occasion encouraged the ensemble to give many more performances, including some in the Berlin Philharmonic's subscription concert series, and inspired other composers to write similar works. Among these is the "Präludium" (Prelude) - again a quartet suite in four movements - written by Theodor Albin Findetsen in 1934. The work, composed in the tradition of Max Reger, caused four double-bass players of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra to form a Double-Bass Quartet. Mozart's "Ave Verum", arranged for double-basses by Erich Hartmann, brings out the instrument's most attractive side, its melodious powers of expression. Helge Jörns's "Mobile Perpetuum", written for the Philharmonic Double-Bass-Quartet in 1976, takes a humorous view of the bass-player's world, with harshly plucked staccati, menacing pizzicati, a plaintivi rebelliousness in the trio, and finally a return to those dark sounds peculiar to the instrument. Paul Chihara‘s "Logs" for four double-basses (composed 1974) belongs to the series "Music of Trees", which all of Japan's best-known composers have contributed to. These works, with their frugally distributed wooden elements, lie close to the meditative radiance of Zen Buddhism. Chihara's work paints a picture of logs floating slowly downstream on a wide river. Erich Hartmann, a bass-player with the Berlin Philharmonic, has written a number of virtuoso pieces for the Double-bass Quartet since the ensemble was refounded in 1967. The three-movement quartet of Hartmann's recorded here is an impressive testimony to the high standard of present-day bass playing. Klaus Stoll (Translation: Clive Williams) ·········· Klaus Stoll was born in 1943. A pupil of Heinz Detering, he was already a member of the Niederrhein Symphony Orchestra at 15; in 1965 he joined the Berlin Philharmonic, and two years later became the orchestra's principal double-bass. In 1970 he began his career as a soloist, in the course of which he has undertaken concert tours world-wide, and has made numerous gramophon recordings of virtuoso works of all periods. Stoll plays a double-bass built by Giovanni Paolo Maggini, Brescia, anno 1617. Friedrich Witt, born 1930, became Germany's youngest bass-player when, at the age of 20, having studied at the Folkwangschule in Essen, he joined the Münster Civic Orchestra. After posts in Duisburg and Frakfurt, he joined the Berlin Philharmonic in 1954 as a solo bass-player. Witt is an active chamber musician (he also plays the recorder and harpsichord), and, since 1972, has been teaching at the Orchestra's Academy. For this recording he used alternately an antonio Mariani instrument of 1667, and one built by Giovanetti de Lucca in 1839. Erich Hartmann, born 1920, has been playing double-bass with the Berlin Philharmonic since 1943. In addition to his activities as a musician, he has composed a considerable number of works, with the emphasis on solo pieces, sonatas, duos, trios, quartets and even an octet, all for double-bass. Hartmann's works receive frequent performance today from bass-players all over the world. His first Double-Bass Quartet is recorded here for the first time. Wolfgang Kohly, born 1944, has been a bass-player in the Berlin Philharmonic since 1967, and was one of the founders of the orchestra's Double-bass Quartet; he has given concerts and made radio broadcasts with the Quartet in Saarbrücken, Freiburg, Berlin, Salzburg, Tokyo ... With his five-stringed instrument built by the Bolzano master Matthias Albanus, Kohly forms the foundation of the Berlin Philharmonic Double-Bass Qurtett in all the pieces on this record.