The Baroque ensemble of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1989, in order to establish a range
of concerts with high ranking baroque music in the scope of the Bregenz festival in the Maria Bildstein
baroque church. These concerts developed into a real attraction for the public in the course of the years. On
the basis of this success the ensemble was also invited to play at the special church service “100 years of the
Vienna Symphony Orchestra” in July 2000 in Bregenz, and guested at the “Schubertiade” (a festival for Franz
Schubert) in Schwarzenberg in 2003. Dolf Peter Oebbecke listened to the ensemble in the summer of 2003 in
Bildstein and immediately engaged them for Triberg. What is special about the ensemble is that the style of
playing and phrasing of the baroque is combined with the audio possibilities of today’s instruments, and so a
unique sound culture is developed. The CD project: “FIORI MUSICALI TRIBERG” is a great joy for all
members of the ensemble and at the same time a special artistic challenge. Through the targeted choice of solo
instruments, each CD has its own programmatic style and distinctive design.

Linard Bardill kommt 1956 in Chur zur Welt und wächst in der Alp- und Traumlandschaft Graubündens auf. Nach der Matura unternimmt er eine halbjährige Reise nach Indien per Autostop. Er studiert Theologie, tauscht jedoch nach Abschluss sofort die Kanzel mit der Bühne. Ab 1986 folgen bis heute Bühnenprogramme, CDs, Bücher und Tourneen.
Linard Bardill singt und schreibt in Schweizerdeutsch, Deutsch und Rätoromanisch, für Kinder und Erwachsene. Musikalisch arbeitet er mit bekannten Musikern wie Max Lässer, Mich Gerber, Pippo Pollina, Domenic Janett, Vladimir Ashkenazy und Rodolphe Schacher zusammen. Für seine Musik erhielt der Bündner den Deutschen Kleinkunstpreis und den Salzburger Stier, für seine CD „Tanz auf den Feldern“ und „Caffè Caflisch“ den Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. Bardill lotet musikalische und thematische Grenzen aus, so mit Fortunat Frölich und dem Sinfonieorchester Basel „Sterben für Anfänger“, mit dem Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich „Die Rose von Jericho“ und mit bekannten Jazzmusikern „Mini Geiss goes Polkajazz“. Im September 2014 erschien die Song-CD: „Scharans … if you make it there“ mit dem Produzenten Thomas Fessler. Linard Bardill hat fünf Kinder und lebt in Scharans, Graubünden.

Rainer Kussmaul, Wolfram Christ and Georg Faust fromed their Ensemble in 1993. The ensemble’s appearance at the Salzburg Easter Festival, the Maggio Musicale Firenze or the Berliner Festwochen were enthusiastically commented by the major newspapers. During a far-east tour it received a press-award in Tokyo calling it “The best Trio of our times”. In love and admiration for the string trio op. 45 of Arnold Schoenberg which represents a peak in the chamber music of our century the ensemble named itself after the highly appreciated composer.

The mezzo-soprano Viviana Araiza Staffini was born in Munich and spent part of her childhood in the USA and Italy. She studied at the Munich College of Music and completed her studies at the International Opera Studio of the Zurich Opera House.

She made her professional opera debut in a title role as Hänsel in Humperdinck’s opera Hänsel und Gretel at the Lucerne Opera in December 1983. In a master class at the Mozarteum Salzburg, she drew the attention of Robert Kettelson, who henceforth became her teacher and mentor. He was particularly impressed by her unusual coloratura talent for Rossini in the key role “La Cenerentola”, which opened the doors of international venues to her in the ensuing years. Another key role in her career was Bizet’s Carmen, with which she, with the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, made her Japanese debut to great acclaim in 1990. Mozart is also prominent in her repertoire, and Riccardo Muti called her to La Scala in Milan in the role of Vitellia in La clemenza di Tito. She has also gained acclaim on the concert stage and often performs at venues like the Cologne Philharmonie, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt and the Dresden Philharmonie. She did several recordings with the Bayerische Rundfunk with works by Rossini, Wolff-Ferrari, Respighi, de Falla, Ginastera, Galindo, Moreno and Garcia-Lorca.

Karel Ančerl was born in 1908 in Tucapy in southern Bohemia. At the age of eleven he entered the grammar school in Prague but left four years later without his parent’s knowledge to attend the conservatory in Prague, where he studied composition, conducting and percussion. He received training in composition from Professor Haba (the “quarter-tone man”); another important teacher was Vaclav Talich, the then music director of the Czech Philharmonic. Ančerl began his musical career in Munich in 1930 where, as assistant conductor to Hermann Scherchen, he worked on the premiere of Alois Haba’s quarter-tone opera DieMutter. His next conducting mentors were first and foremost Erich Kleiber and Bruno Walter, but still more so Furtwangler, who let him attend all his rehearsals during a four-month stay in Berlin. He described his most significant encounter as being that with Alban Berg in Vienna in 1932. After an “apprenticeship year” spent conducting in Berlin, Dresden and Munich, Ančerl worked as a producer for Czech Radio from 1933 to 1939, before being forced out of all work following the invasion of the Wehrmacht and the annexation of Czechoslovakia. He was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942. Recordings made for the National Socialist propaganda film shot in Theresienstadt show a scene in which he was forced to conduct the concentration camp orchestra. He was the only member of his family and almost the only participant of the film to survive subsequent imprisonment in the Auschwitz- Birkenau concentration camp, as if by a miracle. After the end of the Second World War, Ančerl worked at the Opera of the Fifth of May in Prague as artistic director, before becoming music director of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra on 1 September 1947. In October 1950 Ančerl was named artistic director of the Czech Philharmonic; in the years that followed until 1968 he secured it a position at the top of the Eastern Bloc orchestras and invitations from around the world poured in. Ančerl broadened the orchestra’s repertoire to include modern music in particular (Schoenberg, Bartok, Britten) and was a vehement champion of unpopular composers from his home country such as Bohuslav Martinů. He led the Czech Philharmonic on extensive tours of New Zealand, Australia, Japan, China, India and the Soviet Union (1959), later on of the USA and Canada as well. He performed with the orchestra in numerous European countries and was becoming increasingly sought-after to conduct prominent international orchestras. After the events of 1968 Ančerl emigrated to Canada and led the Toronto Symphony Orchestra until 1972. Karel Ančerl died in Toronto in 1973.

Three experienced and enthusiastic chamber musicians came together in 2003 to form the AbsolutTrio.

Since 2009 the ensemble has consisted of Bettina Boller violin, Judith Gerster cello and Stefka Perifanova piano.
Bettina Boller’s fame is based on the internationally broadcast prizewinning musical visualizations of Swiss Television directed by Adrian Marthaler in the 1990s, in which she always played the solo part. She completed her training with Hans Ulrich Lehmann in Bern (teaching and soloist’s diploma with distinction). She also studied for a brief period in the class of Itzhak Perlman at Brooklyn College in New York. Her passion extends to a great variety of styles and musical activities. In addition to “classical” music with the accent on the period ranging from the early twentieth century to the present day, she loves improvising and composing. She has, for example, written her own cadenzas to all the violin concertos by Haydn and Mozart and to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, and has arranged J.S. Bach’s Partita in E major for two and three violins. She is involved with folk music from eastern Europe and Switzerland, and has arranged and composed incidental music as a violin-playing actress in projects with the director Volker Hesse and others. In addition, she conceives and realizes ideas for conveying music to children and juveniles and is a member of the ensemble of soloists at the Collegium Novum Zürich.

After obtaining her school-leaving certificate, the cellist Judith Gerster initially began studying architecture, but the passion for chamber music that has dominated her love of music from childhood soon compelled her to study music.
She acquired her soloist’s diploma in the classes of Ivan Monighetti and Thomas Grossenbacher at the conservatories of Basel and Zurich. Her encounter and lessons with Walter Levin of the LaSalle Quartet were inspiring, and led to her decision to pursue a career as a professional musician.

In addition to her intensive collaboration with the AbsolutTrio, Judith Gerster is a member of the Basel Symphony Orchestra and the Ensemble Amaltea. Selected projects on the Baroque cello and audition coaching enrich her everyday life.
She still loves the visual arts and architecture. She lives out a part of her artistic imagination by creating miniature collages in boxes with materials of all kinds and sizes.

The Bulgarian pianist Stefka Perifanova studied at the National Academy of Music in Sofia with Prof. Konstantin and Julia Ganev (a pupil of Heinrich Neuhaus) and assisted in their piano class for four years. In 1993 she received the Cyrillus and Methodius scholarship, which is highly prized in Bulgaria. That enabled her to study further in Switzerland with Rudolf Buchbinder (concert class), Gérard Wyss (chamber music and lieder accompaniment) and Bruno Canino (soloist’s diploma). Stefka Perifanova has won prizes at numerous competitions, including the Edward Tschumi Prize for the best soloist’s diploma of the year and first prize at the Concurso Internacional de Música Cidade do Porto. Over and above her solo appearances, she is much in demand as a chamber musician and lieder accompanist on international concert platforms and performs with partners like Sol Gabetta, Raphael Oleg, Hansheinz Schneeberger and Györgi Pauk. She is particularly interested in contemporary composing and has premiered numerous works. In addition to performing with the AbsolutTrio, Stefka Perifanova is a member of the soloists’ ensemble “camerata variabile basel”, adjudicates at piano competitions and often assists at master classes (for János Starker, Igor Oistrakh, Menahem Pressler, Bernard Greenhouse, among others). Stefka Perifanova has been lecturing at the Zurich College of Arts since 1999 and at the Basel College of Music since 2011.

Artistic involvement with contemporary music is of prime importance for the three musicians of the AbsolutTrio, which is why they commission works at regular intervals. Eight weighty works for piano trio (some with live electronics) have come into being in that way and they are integrated into richly evocative programmes as trouvaillesand rare items that deserve to be exposed to the light of day. Among the venues at which the Trio has performed are the Art Center in Seoul, the Wigmore Hall in London, the Munich Gasteig, the Zurich Tonhalle, WDR Cologne and the ppIANISSIMO Festival in Sofia. The first CD of the AbsolutTrio (still with the cellist Imke Frank), featuring works by Arnold Schoenberg, Rudolf Kelterborn and Bernd Alois Zimmermann, was released on the Guild label in 2007; it was praised most highly by the press and received a Supersonic award.

Discography