Decca Releases Julia Fischer on CD and DVD 9/7

Violinist Julia Fischer's recording of Paganini's 24 Caprices will be released by Decca in the U.S. digitally on August 31 exclusively at iTunes with the recording available in full distribution on September 7. On the same day, Decca will also release a DVD of Ms. Fischer's 2008 professional piano debut performing the Grieg Piano Concerto at a concert at which she also performed the Saint-Saëns Violin Concerto No. 3.

Ms. Fischer signed an exclusive recording contract with Decca in 2008 and her first album of Bach Concertos recorded with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields was released in January 2009 and debuted at #1 on the Billboard Classical Chart. With this new recording, Ms. Fischer hopes to dispel the reputation of Paganini's 24 Caprices as merely virtuosic showpieces: "The Caprices represent 24 moods - little musical ideas, each one different, each one appealing."

Ms. Fischer, now 27, first heard the 24 Caprices when she was eight-years-old at a children's music course at which Austrian violinist Thomas Zehetmair performed: "I thought, these are the most difficult things a violinist can play. When I was 10, I learnt my first Caprice - number 17 - and I felt like I was a real, true violinist."

Ms. Fischer, internationally renowned for her interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach, attributes her discovery of Robert Schumann's transcription of the sixth piece, the ‘Trill Caprice', to her desire to seriously study Paganini and ultimately to record the Caprices: "Unlike many critics and biographers, Schumann did not perceive this man as a ‘Devil's Fiddler' or a circus act. He recognized the musical power of these 24 miniatures, and what a musical poem he made out of it (the Caprice No. 6)."

To prepare for the recording, made at Munich's August Everding Hall, Ms. Fischer says she put down her violin and set aside any thought of the technical challenges the pieces present: "I looked at the score and the musical background of the pieces, completely forgetting the technical challenges. After making a musical idea in my head, I then tried to make them work."

In seeking to unlock the meaning and emotion of each piece, she deliberated over bowings, over phrasing, over figurations and, contrary to her usual practice, did not insist on following exactly what was written in the score. For example, she recorded Caprice No. 6 with a mute and without, even though there is no indication in the score of a mute: "The one with mute clearly sounded better and more logical. Why shouldn't a composer who spent his whole life exhaustively exploring the possibilities of violin playing, who thought up mixed bowings and left-hand pizzicato, not also have used a mute?"

Ms. Fischer says Paganini's contribution to music extends far beyond the violin: "I think that we really forget that most of the music of the 19th century we would not have without Nicolai Paganini."

While Ms. Fischer is recognized worldwide as a violinist who possesses a talent of uncommon ability and is an exceptionally gifted performer, reflected in the numerous awards and effusive reviews she has received for both her live performances and recordings, she is also a talented pianist. On January 1st, 2008 she made her professional piano debut at the Alte Oper Frankfurt performing the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie and conductor Matthias Pintscher. On the same program, she performed the Saint-Saëns Violin Concerto No. 3. A DVD of this concert will be released by Decca on September 7.

In his review of this concert Arno Widmann of the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper described the atmosphere in the concert hall: "The excitement of the audience was palpable. After all, everyone was aware that only two extremes were possible: either this would turn out to be the total disgrace of one of the greatest living violinists; or it would mark the triumphant birth of a new pianist. From the beginning of the Adagio of the Grieg piano concerto, everyone present knew they were witnessing the overwhelming triumph of Julia Fischer."

In an interview with Gramophone magazine last year Ms. Fischer said that she always studies repertoire on both instruments: "I really feel that that sort of dual sensibility raises my expectations of myself both as a violinist and as a pianist. It's much harder to achieve the sense of polyphonic playing on a violin than on a piano, for example, and it's much easier to play melodically on a violin than on the piano. So when I play one instrument or the other, I'm always coming to it from these two very different perspectives."

The DVD includes an extended interview with Ms. Fischer titled "Two Musical Worlds" that has previously aired on German television.

Julia Fischer was born in Munich in 1983 and began learning the piano from her mother at the age of three. She soon took up the violin as well and, following three years of studies at the Leopold Mozart Conservatory in Augsburg, she became a pupil of the renowned violin pedagogue Ana Chumachenco at the Munich Musikhochschule. In 1995, only eleven, she won the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition. The following year, in Lisbon, she took first prize at the Eurovision Competition for Young Instru mentalists and soon launched an international career that led to her breakthrough New York appearances in 2003 with conductor Lorin Maazel at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.

In 2007 Julia Fischer was named "Artist of the Year" at the Classic FM Gramophone Awards. She performs regularly with all the leading orchestras and conductors of Europe and North America and at the most important festivals, including the BBC Proms. In 2009 she visited eleven European and ten North American cities as leader-soloist of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields' 50th Anniversary Tour.

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