Czech Chamber Music Society • Dresden Chamber Soloists

The Dresden Chamber Soloists are a chamber formation whose predominantly young members hold solo positions in one of the oldest, most traditional and most sought-after orchestras in the world: the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden. As an exquisite and musically highly motivated ensemble, they bring their famous sound to the chamber music stage. With classical repertoire and their own arrangements, the musicians have made it their mission to play works in smaller ensembles at an extraordinary level and to make the exemplary sound of the “Saxon Miracle Harp” accessible to classical audiences in special formats, including works by contemporary composers. Through selected performance locations with architectural and scenic appeal, they manage to appeal to, inspire and excite a wide audience, even in rural areas.

Since its founding in 2019, the still young chamber ensemble has performer in numerous concert halls, such as the Semperoper, the Dresden Zwinger, the Leipzig Gewandhaus and at the “Sandstein and Music” festival. In May 2023, the musicians made a guest appearance in Ukraine on their own initiative and gave concerts there for peace and hope, which earned them the highest respect and recognition, even from the State Minister for Culture and Media of the Federal Republic of Germany Claudia Roth and the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who invited this formation to Bellevue Palace in Berlin. In a very short space of time, the musicians have already produced two artistically ambitious, successful and highly acclaimed CDs with a wide variety of works by composers such as Mieczysław Weinberg, Ludwig van Beethoven and the contemporary Italian composer Simone Fontanelli, who composed and arranged works explicitly for the Dresden Chamber Soloists.

In the near future, the musicians will perform at festivals in Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Korea, Japan, again in the Ukraine, in Germany and will premiere a bass version of the Wesendonck songs in Graupa in the “Lohengrin” house together with bassist Georg Zeppenfeld and therefore
perform worldwide. 

Robert Oberaigner, principal clarinettist of the Staatskapelle Dresden, has made his reputation as one of the most distinctive performers of his generation. With his focus primarily on contemporary music and historically informed interpretation, he is invited regularly to renowned international festivals (BBC Proms, Lucerne Festival, Salzburg Easter Festival) and famous concert halls (Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Cologne Philharmonic Hall, Vienna Musikverein, Salzburg Mozarteum etc.).

He also appears in a variety of chamber ensembles with such outstanding musicians as Myung-Whun Chung, Leonidas Kavakos, Nils Mönkemeyer, Christian Gerhaher, and Sol Gabetta. In the field of historically informed interpretation, he collaborates frequently with such renowned ensembles as Concerto Köln, the Dresden Festival Orchestra, and Cappella Coloniensis; he has also appeared as a soloist with the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne and the Staatskapelle Dresden. 

With members of that orchestra, he initiated the project “kapelle 21”, the chief goal of which is performing, demonstrating, and interpreting music of the 20th and 21st centuries. As part of that concert series, Oberaigner has already premiered a clarinet concerto dedicated to him by the Italian composer Simone Fontanelli. In 2018 he even made his own debut as a composer in Tokyo, performing his first opus, Tränen der Colombina.

With the pianist Michael Schöch, he makes recordings for the German label Dabringhaus & Grimm. Together they have released the complete works for clarinet and piano by Max Reger and the sonatas of Johannes Brahms. On the Naxos label, he has also recorded works for clarinet by the Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg in collaboration with the conductor Michail Jurowski.

Robert Oberaigner was born in Hall in Tyrol, Austria. He studied at the Tyrol State Conservatoire under Max Bauer and later at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna under Horst Hájek and Johann Hindler. He expanded his awareness of historically informed interpretation under Eric Hoprich at The Hague, and he completed his studies at the University of Music in Lübeck under Sabine Meyer. From 2003 until 2014 he was the principal clarinettist of the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne, and he made guest appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic. Besides performing, he also leads masterclasses in Milan, Beijing, and South Tyrol.

In the course of just a few seasons, Petr Popelka has established himself as one of the most inspirational young Czech conductors as he enters the 2024/2025 season in his first year as chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. However, Popelka’s engagement in this challenging position (after several years working with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra) does not hinder him from performing other conducting duties in this country as well; he continues to hold the position of chief conductor and artistic director of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. Besides performing in concerts, he has also devoted himself to opera, having worked, for example, at the Norwegian National Opera in Oslo, at the Semperoper in Dresden, and at Prague’s National Theatre.

However, it was as a double bass player that Popelka got his start. He first studied the instrument in Prague, then in Freiburg, and having finished his studies, he was hired by the Staatskapelle Dresden, where he worked for nearly ten years as the deputy principal double bassist. Despite his stellar conducting career, he can be heard on stage from time to time in chamber music both as a double bass player and as a pianist.

On 26 June 1788, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart made a new entry in the list of compositions he was keeping: “a short Adagio for two violins, viola, and bass, and a fugue I wrote a long time ago for two pianos”. It is unclear why years after having written the Fugue K 426 in December 1783, he decided to transcribe it for strings and add a dramatic introduction in the manner of a Bach cantata. He seemingly did so at the suggestion of his Viennese publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister, whose music publishing business had been in operation in Vienna since 1785, and who had published several of Mozart’s works besides the Adagio and Fugue, K 546, including the Piano Quartet, K 478 and the String Quartet, K 499, nicknamed the “Hoffmeister Quartet”. At the time, perhaps Mozart simply needed to immerse himself briefly in his old contrapuntal studies before turning his attention to the complex counterpoint of his Symphony in C major, K 551, known as the “Jupiter Symphony”. 

The Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K 546, is routinely played by string quartets and even more often by string orchestras of various sizes. Because the bass line in the autograph is divided in one place into “violoncelli” and “contrabasso”, it is clear that Mozart had a larger ensemble in mind. Basically, however, the music is in four parts, with the dark opening of the Adagio alternating with dramatically tense passages at a static pianissimo dynamic and moving chromatically by semitones. The Fugue gradually departs from its Bachian model, increasingly revealing that its composer belongs to the Classical era. As a whole, the work bears witness to the continuity of German music of the 17th and 18th centuries despite the fact that the works of the great master Bach had nearly fallen into oblivion in Mozart’s day and were appreciated only for their didactic value.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Quintet for clarinet, two violins, viola, and cello in A major, K 581, is innovative in its conception as absolute chamber music in the purely modern sense, i.e., in its inimitable presentation of the voice of a woodwind instrument in equal dialogue with other parts. For the first time in music history, instruments so different from each other were perfectly and uniformly balanced and united whilst exploiting their colours and sonic characteristics. In later times, many of Mozart’s successors attempted to write compositions for the same forces, but only one of them succeeded at penetrating deeply to the very essence of the chamber music sound: Brahms.

Mozart’s path to the Clarinet Quintet in A major certainly was not direct. There are two fragments that Mozart composed on commission for his friend, the clarinettist Anton Stadler (1753–1812), but he put them aside and left them unfinished. The Allegro in B flat major (K Anh. 91, K 516c or 580a) for B flat clarinet, two violins, viola, and cello dates from 1787. In September 1789 was working on an Allegro in F major (K Anh. 90, K 580b) for clarinet in C, basset horn, violin, viola, and cellos. The way that movement is composed already closely resembles the Clarinet Quintet, K 581, but this truly beautiful music ultimately also remained unused.

At the time, the Viennese instrument maker Theodor Lotz (1718–1792) was commissioned by Stadler to design a new prototype for a basset clarinet in A, which had an expanded low range compared with a classic clarinet, extending down to a low “A” sounding pitch, using the basset horn design for the low notes. Although Mozart was enthusiastic about the new instrument, it did not survive the test of time because of its mechanical complexity. After Lotz’s death, no one else continued the instrument’s development. Only recently have basset clarinets been made not only with modern designs, but also as replicas of Lotz’s original instruments, which have been used for performing not only this quintet, but also Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major, K 622. However, both compositions are routinely played on a modern A clarinet with adjustments to the part’s range. Events in Vienna took a sudden turn when Mozart began composing the quintet for a third time. It was finished on 29 September 1789, and on 22 December 1789, Stadler premiered the new Clarinet Quintet in A major at a concert of the Tonkünstler-Gesselschaft at Vienna’s Hoftheater playing the new basset clarinet. At the premiere, Mozart played the viola part himself.

Less than two years later, Mozart also wrote his Clarinet Concerto in A major, K 622, for Stadler. The clarinettist was accompanying the composer and his wife on their journey to Prague, where he premiered the concerto on 16 October 1791 and played in the theatre orchestra, performing the obligato clarinet part in an aria from Mozart’s coronation opera Titus. It seems incredible that seven weeks later, Mozart was no longer among the living (he died on 5 December 1791). Lotz died as well a year later, and his heirs tried in vain to collect the fee from Stadler for the making of the basset clarinet. Mozart likewise never received even a penny for the works Stadler had commissioned from him. As Volkmar Braubehrens documents in his marvellous book Mozart in Vienna, at the time of Mozart’s death, the clarinettist owed the composer 500 gulden. Mozart’s widow Constanze tried unsuccessfully not only to remind Stadler of his debt, but also to get him to return manuscripts of Mozart’s compositions. To escape his creditors, Stadler fled to Germany, where, under financial pressure, he did not flinch even from offering Mozart’s compositions as works of his own. In the end, the valuable manuscripts ended up in a pawnbroker’s shop along with a basset clarinet. It took ten years before the works were rediscovered, made available, and published. Thus ended a great musical friendship, the fruits of which included the Clarinet Quintet in A major, K 581. Nonetheless, the work is still sometimes called the “Stadler-Quintett”.

This unique composition radiates a peculiarly poetic magic already from its opening sonata movement. It breathes an air of quiet serenity and joyous wellbeing. Especially in the second movement, Mozart takes advantage of the clarinet’s ability to play cantilena lines and uses its wealth of colours, but none of the other instruments are relegated to merely secondary roles. In the third movement, a menuet with two trios, the first trio is in the minor mode and is reserved for the strings alone. Then in the second trio, the clarinet cheerfully abandons the menuet’s restraint, and the music assumes the character of a Ländler from the outskirts of Vienna. The variations of the fourth movement proceed just as boldly, with virtuosic escapades, a minor-key episode, and a veiled Adagio followed by the return of a carefree, playful mood.

Petr Popelka is one of today’s most successful and most sought-after Czech conductors. He began as a double bass player, studying the instrument first in Prague, then in Freiburg. After his studies, he was hired by the Dresden Staatskapelle, where he spent nearly ten years as the deputy principal double bass player. He had already begun to take an interest in conducting as a student, and that interest was stimulated by his own composing and developed through private lessons. He took part at a number of masterclasses, and he was the assistant to Alan Gilbert, the chief conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. In August 2020, Petr Popelka became the chief conductor of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, in September 2022 he assumed the post of chief conductor of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, and finally, from September 2024, he is the new chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

Symptomatically, despite being very busy with his conducting duties, Petr Popelka is not giving up playing chamber music on the double bass and piano. At the same time, he is actively composing his own music. In 2015 at the festival Podium in Mödling, Austria, he conducted his own work, The Labyrinth of the Heart. Popelka had his Scenes for Piano Quartet premiered in 2015 in the Glass Hall at Vienna’s Musikverein, and on 1 May 2023 the Elphier-Quartett premiered Popelka’s composition Synthesis ad lib. in Hamburg.

The Sonata for clarinet, violin, double bass, and piano is a brand new work that Popelka just composed in the autumn of 2024. Although the non-traditional instrumentation is similar to that of Messiaen’s great Quartet for the End of Time, in reality the new composition is related to a different major chamber work, Béla Bartók’s Contrasts for violin, clarinet, and piano (1938), to which Popelka adds his own instrument, the double bass. In Contrasts, Bartók takes a diametrically opposite approach, with mutual combinations of instruments always dominated by one or another of the players. While in Bartók’s the individual movements are not thematically related, in Popelka’s composition, the odd-numbered movements (preludio, intermezzo, and coda alla marcia) give the work a unified framework through mutual interconnections and shared thematic correlations. The weight of the composition, however, lies mainly in the second movement in an expanded scherzo and also in the fourth movement, notturno, which serves the function of a slow movement.

The Four Nocturnes for clarinet and piano (Vier Nachtstücke) were written in 2016 for the clarinettist Robert Oberaigner. They are “music of the night”, and a dreamy, quietly nocturnal atmosphere pervades them. In the first piece, chorale, a simply harmonised fragment of a chorale melody is blended with polytonal chords and other snatches of melodies, then the opening motif returns at the end. In the second piece, recitativo, the clarinet and the piano are in constant dialogue, sometimes merging entirely. The third piece, canzone lontana (distant song), is a simple melody in a two-voice texture and at an extremely quiet dynamic level. In it, the melody moves in micro-intervals lying between the semitones (but not in quartertones), and the piano also departs from the usual tempered tuning with the aid of natural harmonics. The concluding capriccio in the form of a scherzo allows the clarinettist to employ his virtuosity in passagework.