Biber Meets Vejvanovsky

A famous violinist and an outstanding trumpeter - Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and Pavel Josef Vejvanovsky. The two already knew each other from their education at the Jesuit College in Troppau, Silesia, and both musicians came to the episcopal court in Kromeríž. While Biber did not return from a business trip without permission after only a short time and made a career as a violinist in Salzburg, Vejvanovsky remained in Kromeríž for the rest of his life and worked there as a Kapellmeister (although as a trumpeter he was never officially given this title). The two seem to have continued to be in contact, for the Kremsier library contains several of Biber's works that were written during his Salzburg period. The fruitful collaboration between the two musicians led to a series of chamber music works in which the trumpet is used on an equal footing with the violin. These works show that Vejvanovsky must have been an outstanding trumpeter, for in his time the only instrument available was the natural trumpet, in which the player had to produce all the notes with his lips alone. In these pieces, the trumpet sometimes plays in keys in which not all the notes are contained in the trumpet's natural tone row and the trumpeter has to resort to special techniques to produce these "fake" notes. Jean-François Madeuf is one of the very few trumpeters today who have mastered playing on the natural trumpet (without auxiliary holes) and presents this special repertoire from Kromeríž /Salzburg on this instrument for the first time.