For nearly a hundred years, the doors of the famous Red Hedgehog coffee house (Zum roten Igel) opened onto the very heart of Viennese musical life. The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde established the city's first public concert hall there, hosting regular premires by Beethoven, and then Schubert, who even lived next door at one point. As if that wasn't enough, the complex of buildings included a bar at the back with a vaulted cellar that later became Brahms's favourite haunt, where patrons caroused and who knows what kind of musical activities went on after hours.
The original building was demolished in 1906, but the spirit of the great composers feeding off the soundscape of a dynamic and cosmopolitan urban culture lives on in ZRI. Schubert and Brahms were both fascinated by Hungarian 'Gypsy-band' music and it became as fashionable as the waltz in Vienna, with one of the tunes included here still a concert favourite even now in an arrangement by Brahms. Bach may never have been to the city but some of his music must surely have been performed at the Igel and his ghost presided over the whole tradition.
And this recording celebrates ghosts from the future too. American tunes were being played in Vienna even in Brahms's time, and once the first recordings started to arrive the jazz influence on improvising Hungarian bands and artists like Georges Boulanger was immediate. The transatlantic flavour of Hora din Budesti and Tamboo owes much to this uniquely Viennese melting pot and, if the Igel still stood, the fusion of old-world instruments with contemporary songs by Donna Summer, Solange and Taylor Swift would not be out of place.
ZRI take their name from Zum Roten Igel, the legendary Viennese venue in the times when Brahms and Schubert were alive; a serious classical concert hall on one side, and a space where composers drank, and caroused on the other.
Beginning with their radical re-scoring of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet to include accordion and santouri (dulcimer), ZRI have developed captivating programs that re-imagine Schubert's great C major Quintet, adventure with Charlie Chaplin, and waltz with Schoenberg, drawing the audience into a world where they are free to let go of genre distinctions and simply experience the concert story.
ZRI are five world-class musicians drawing together a wealth of collective experience with international orchestras, improvising, and cross-cultural collaborations into a single focus. The group has performed at major festivals across the UK and Europe, including Gottweig, Lindau, Liestal, Boswil and Alpentne, and has made critically-acclaimed albums of both the Schubert String Quintet, D.956 and Brahms Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115. In an interconnected world, classical becomes radical.
ZRI
Ben Harlan clarinet, bass clarinet
Max Baillie, violin
Matthew Sharp cello, baritone
Jon Banks, accordion
Iris Pissaride, santouri
