Alla Turca

Andreas Romberg explored new musical territory when he got the idea to include Turkish color in his fourth symphony. It was not until the romantic era that Oriental or Arabian color very deliberately was incorporated into symphonic music, whether in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade (1888) or in Engelbert Humperdinck's Maurische Rhapsodie (1898). Right in the first movement of his symphony Romberg used the title "A la turca" to get his audience to anticipate Turkish color. The gradually intensified initial part goes over into a passage with the expected percussion accents and swiftly whirling violin figures. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Violin Concerto in A major, the last of his five violin concertos, is also regarded as a concert piece with Turkish color. In the rondo finale there is a famous interlude in A minor in which the violoncellists and double bassists beat the rhythm on the strings with their bow sticks. This too produces the popular "Alla turca" flair. Our soloist is the young Swiss musician Julia Schroder, and it is not least in the swift main part of the Haydn overture that things sound "Turkish"; here not only the timpani but also the bass drum and cymbals accentuate the rhythm. This album also marks the inauguration of our complete recording of the symphonic music of Andreas Romberg.