Cecilia Zilliacus

With her acclaimed exquisite and technically well formed violin playing Cecilia appears in a wide variety of contexts: in the Temmel Quartet, in a string trio – which has no name – with colleagues from the Royal Opera House Orchestra, and the Gothenburg Philharmonic, together with the big symphony orchestras in Sweden and abroad and, often, with Bengt-Åke Lundin. He is the pianist to whom no music is unplayable. With elegance, ease and temperament he can give both the ingenious Bartók and the romantic Dohnányi an expression well suited to these two composers who are so different from one another.

Together Cecilia Zilliacus and Bengt-Åke Lundin create music that leaves the listener breathless, not only because of its virtuosity, but just as much through the surprising musical ideas that glitter in Bartók’s sonata, with its roots in Hungarian folk music. As a contrast to Bartók’s temperament, Cecilia and Bengt-Åke are given the opportunity to play with full expression in the poetical sonata by Bartók’s compatriot, Ernst von Dohnányi. This music demands much of the musicians. Here they give the work an “under-the-surface frenzy” that never allows the romanticism in the music to become an end in itself.