Focus Bohlenstube

1585 - when a dendochronological investigation brought this magical date to light, the viola da gamba that will be played in this programme inevitably had its nickname: the ‘Schütz viol’. The tree from whose wood the instrument is made was felled in the year of Heinrich Schütz's birth at the earliest.

The programme of this concert goes in search of clues as to what music was originally composed for it, what Schütz and his European contemporaries wrote for it. Maestro Claudio Monteverdi had himself portrayed in 1644 with just such an instrument, which presumably also came from the workshop of the Brescian violin and viola da gamba maker Giovanni Paolo Maggini.

As the ‘Schütz viol’ is tuned in alto G, which was used almost exclusively in the consort, Simone Eckert and Ulrich Wedemeier also discover the rare and therefore precious pieces that were explicitly written for it in later years.