Giacinto Scelsi: The Violin Works

Featuring

Weiping Lin
Giacinto Scelsi

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Performer Biography

Weiping Lin, the violinist on this album, is the Assistant Concertmaster of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna and a respected performer of contemporary music in Austria.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Scelsi believed that if a tone is played for a very long time, it becomes 'big,' revealing many more harmonies and enveloping the listener, acting as both creator and destroyer.

Composer's Artistic Vision

A year before his death, Scelsi stated in an interview titled 'I am not a composer' that he sought to hide his face and person, preferring to be represented by a symbol: a circle above a horizontal line.

Compositional Technique

Scelsi's compositional approach was unique, developing sonic ideas through oral instructions, piano improvisations, or experiments on the ondiola, an early electronic music instrument.

Recording & Production

This album is the first time all of Scelsi's published works for solo violin have been gathered on one disc.

Compositional Technique

Scelsi's later works, like Xnoybis and L'âme ailée L'âme ouverte, explore microtonality, distributing single tones and their closest neighbors across different strings and using highly differentiated playing techniques, including eighth tones.

Composer Biography

Giacinto Scelsi, born Giacinto Maria Scelsi, Count d'Ayala Valva, was an eccentric Italian composer considered perhaps the most mysterious and controversial creative musician of the twentieth century.