Asiago

The new album “Asiago” by the creative solo cellist Julius Berger is a clever application and further development of a very encouraging, powerful new trend in music: the imaginative exploration of new repertoire fields by opening contemporary music to the vast areas of other cultures. In the case of the violoncello, this development seems almost provoked by its technical and traditional repertoire boundaries. Julius Berger demonstrates how even in a landscape such as the Alps, which seems to be the ancestral home of well-known traditional folk music history closely interwoven with classical music, highly excitingly different ethno-potentials can be discovered upon closer inspection. From the precious discovery of the small ethnic group of the Cimbar people, who came from the north and settled in present-day northern Italy centuries ago and still live there to this day with their own language, he develops a rounded CD program of newly written music. This music was heard for the first time in part at the Asiago Festival, which has existed for 25 years, and in various combinations – solo, in a duet, with prepared piano, and with a cello ensemble and chamber orchestra, it opens up a vast, suggestively meditative new repertoire for the deep string instrument and also the human voice. Some of the works are premiere recordings.