A fitting celebration of a long-standing Italian festival
The Strad Issue: January 2026
Description: A fitting celebration of a long-standing Italian festival
Musicians: Julius Berger, Hyun-Jung Berger (cellos) Franghiz Ali-Zadeh (piano) Marlis Neumann (harp) Stefan Blum (percussion) Alberto Brazzale (narrator) Ensemble Cellopassionato; South West German Chamber Orchestra Pforzheim/Chungki Min
Works: Music by Ali-Zadeh, De Marzi, Dreyer, Gárdonyi, Schmitt, Silvestrov and Sollima
Catalogue number: WERGO WER7415 2
The North Italian town of Asiago has quietly hosted a chamber music festival for the past six decades. For roughly half of this time it has been led by the cello-playing couple Julius and Hyun-Jung Berger. This album collects music written especially for them, much of it inspired by local folk songs in the Cimbrian dialect: Zsolt Gárdonyi, Lutz Dreyer and Franghiz Ali-Zadeh all have, in their diverse ways, set serene hymns and thigh-slapping dances most effectively for two cellos.
Cellist–composer Giovanni Sollima employs a resonant scordatura for the minimalist ostinatos of Arboreto salvatico, his Lamentatio bringing forth absolute conviction from Hyun-Jung Berger. As her husband’s thoughtful notes point out, this piece, written in memory of the Armenian genocide, achieves additional significance when performed in Asiago, a city that was razed to the ground during the First World War.
Markus Schmitt’s Campanile is similarly charged, its two movements inspired by pictures of Asiago and Mariupol, two cities destroyed in wars a century apart. The violins’ initial outcry – the first high-pitched sounds heard on the CD – is as strong a denunciation of war as any I’ve heard in music.
The album is movingly bookended by the Berger-led ensemble Cellopassionato in two melodious pieces of a religious hue: Signore delle cime by Giuseppe De Marzi and Valentin Silvestrov’s Prayer for Ukraine. The Bergers are a beautifully attuned duo, and – playing instruments by Giovanni Grancino (Julius) and Francesco Gofriller (Hyun-Jung) – a seductively sonorous one throughout this well recorded and lovingly presented CD.
CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE
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