‘Frank Peter Zimmermann, Antoine Tamestit, Christian Poltéra’

The German violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann performs around the clock as a soloist with first class orchestras and conductors in Europe, the United States, Japan, South America and Australia. A couple of times a year, he pauses his solo career and dives in at the deep end with viola player Antoine Tamestit and cellist Christian Poltéra. At BOZAR the trio plays Johann Sebastian Bach: the greatest of all time, according to Zimmermann. Bach composed the Goldberg Variations for harpsichord and two keyboard instruments on the basis of a single theme. In the 1980s, the violinist Sitkovetsky came up with expressive variations for strings. How original would Bach have found the string version of his Goldberg Variations? The unparalleled Trio Zimmermann performs the complete set, after Arnold Schönberg’s extremely difficult String trio, op. 4.

Come and listen to Uri Caine and Robin Verheyen’s jazzy interpretation of the Goldberg Variations on 7 February 2019, then compare them with the abovementioned string version and Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s piano interpretation on 24 April 2019.