EVERY CHAPTER A LOVE STORY.
Is the double bass simply an oversized violin or does it really belong in the viola da gamba family? The experts can’t make their minds up. The instrument is indispensable in an orchestra, but is utterly underestimated as a solo instrument – at least in the field of classical music. If you ask the young Viennese double bass player Dominik Wagner about his instrument, he won’t tire of singing its praises to the heavens. He goes into veritable raptures and can instantly run down an endless list of composers, male and female, who have written works for the double bass. As Dominik Wagner writes in the accompanying booklet: “My aim is to have done with prejudices once and for all and show that the double bass can do a whole lot more than plink away in the background! This CD sets out to be a tribute to the double bass. A portrait of its potential, a love letter praising all its familiar and as yet unfamiliar facets, timbres and expressive possibilities. An invitation to embrace the warm, soft, welcoming tone of the bass and establish its songful and tuneful credentials.”
“CHAPTERS – A Double Bass Story” is the title he has given to his album. As a result, all of the composers featured on the album have a chapter of their own, and when seen as a whole, those chapters show just how diversely the double bass is represented in music. From Schubert, via Rachmaninov and Ravel, to Debussy, Piazzolla and Gabriel Fauré. There are also some curios like the “Cantique” by Nadia Boulanger, and discoveries such as the work by the Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk. Dominik Wagner has written about his own thoughts and motivations for each piece in the accompanying booklet. His most personal choices are probably the “Andante Cantabile” by Peteris Vasks and “The Lord Bless You And Keep You” by John Rutter – really a choral work, now arranged for double bass and piano. This work has meant something to Dominik Wagner ever since his time as a chorister with the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Dominik Wagner also proves his profound knowledge of the double bass in his own arrangements of works by Max Richter and Philip Glass, along with the two wonderful pieces by Charlie Chaplin and the famous ballad “Moon River” by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer.
He recorded the album with pianist Lauma Skride. He first met the Latvian pianist when working together with the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation, a body which Dominik Wagner has supported and promoted wince he was 19. “My first collaboration with Lauma Skride was in 2017, when we performed together in a concert in Copenhagen. A number of chamber-music concerts followed in the subsequent years. When I was looking for a pianist for this project and Lauma agreed to do it, I was over the moon,” enthuses Dominik Wagner. He especially appreciates her versatility and her smooth brilliance at the piano. “Although most of the repertoire comprises new transcriptions and arrangements, she had formed a musical vision of the pieces in no time at all. As a result, we were able to inspire one another and to delve deeper into the music in every bar as the recordings progressed.”
“CHAPTERS” is Dominik Wagner’s third album on the Berlin Classics label. His discography began in 2017 with the Fanny Mendelssohn Bursary, which Dominik Wagner won together with his musical partner clarinettist Vera Karner. That collaboration produced the “GASSENHAUER” album, which won an ECHO Klassik award that same year. In 2021 he released his “REVOLUTION OF BASS” album, recorded with the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn under the baton of Emmanuel Tjeknavorian, featuring music by double-bass legend Giovanni Bottesini. That album too was an award-winner, this time with the OPUS Klassik. Last year he set out on his first extended tour of the USA. With such success and milestones under his belt, Dominik Wagner is living proof of the importance of the wonderful instrument that is the double bass in music. The Double Bass Story will be continued!
