Nils Monkemeyer

Nils Mönkemeyer – William Walton, Max Bruch, Arvo Pärt (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 58:48 minutes | 571 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

For his new album, Nils Mönkemeyer chose works by William Walton, Max Bruch, and Arvo Pärt. The album starts with Walton’s Viola Concerto and continues with two of Bruch’s compositions: Mönkemeyer recorded Bruch’s Romance for Viola and Orchestra as well as an arrangement of his “Kol Nidrei” (originally for cello and orchestra). Finally, the album contains Pärt’s “Fratres”, arranged for viola, string orchestra and percussion. Mönkemeyer’s musical partners for the recording were the Bamberger Symphoniker conducted by Markus Poschner.

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Nils Monkemeyer – Vivaldi – Paganini – Tartini (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:00:23 minutes | 646 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Since the viola is currently considered an instrument for soloist in its own right (these days, in the early 21st century) and no longer an auxiliary to fill out the middle range within an ensemble, its thin repertoire is sorely felt. For example, of the five hundred concertos composed by Vivaldi for the most diverse instruments, not one is dedicated to the viola. Only the viola d’amore comes close in terms of its tessitura, but its tuning and the presence of sympathetic strings make it very different from the viola. Violists therefore generally resort to transcription if they want to access the repertoire of their fellow violinists or cellists. This is the project proposed here by the German violist Nils Mönkemeyer. Born in 1978, he studied violin in the city of Bremen before moving on to the viola, not an exceptional path in those days.

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Nils Monkemeyer – Baroque (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:13:52 minutes | 1,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

The liner notes aren’t very clear, so here are the details of this most singular recording, which focuses especially on Bach. Violist Nils Mönkemeyer and lutist Andreas Arend have chosen to perform, in a single “double” suite – BWV 995 and 1011 – the two preludes to the suite, and then the two allemandes etc. – in the knowledge that the BWV 995 is transcription for solo lute made by Bach himself of his own Suite for Cello n°5 BWV 1011… But here, we hear BWV 995 re-written by our two soloists, for viol and lute. As for the Suite BWV 1011, originally written for solo cello, Mönkemeyer has given it over to solo viola, without making any changes to the discourse. At every turn, movement by movement, the juxtaposition shows off the “developed” harmony that Bach gives to the lute, more inferred than really written out, just as in the version for the solo instrument. Mönkemeyer and Arend round off the programme with other examples of the very ancient and widely-practised baroque-era habit of transcription, with pieces by Robert de Visée and Michel Lambert (who were themselves models for Bach when he wrote “à la française”) and the famous lutist Leopold Weiss, a friend of Bach’s, whose Rondeau was long thought to be a work of Bach’s before musicologists credited its true composer.

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Nils Monkemeyer – Anájikon (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 50:44 minutes | 465 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series

“Anajikon”, the second ECM album after “Music for piano and string quartet”, by Athens-born and Munich-based Konstantia Gourzi, incorporates her chamber and orchestral music of the past decade. The composer also conducts the Lucerne Academy Orchestra here: “I see composing and conducting as a whole, as an inseparable relationship”, she says.

Gourzi is particularly concerned with making connections between the arts, which also relates to the question of her own artistic identity and the influence of her origins. In Gourzi’s sound language, elements of different musical traditions repeatedly merge, and East and West enter into a dialogue.

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