« BACK

Johannes Wels

I have known Johannes Wels since the early 1990s from my time when I was an apprentice in Jacob Saunders´ workshop in Krems/ Donau. Our common interest in instruments and bows and love for chamber music soon developed into a friendship with many good conversations over dinner and chamber music sessions in different settings from classical to folk music. A proud owner of Pluhar violins, Johannes is an expert in Viennese “Schrammel” music. His group is called Donauschrammeln www.donauschrammeln.at and they play tunes by Strauss, Lanner, Stolz and many other composers who are not so well known. You can hear my violin on this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hezQw7TJgIE . I am lucky to have heard them several times, among them an unforgettable concert in Istanbul, Turkey, where they performed not only on the city´s biggest shopping mile but also in an open concert venue along the Bosphoros organized by the Austrian Cultural office. Here he plays a Pluhar violin in a Jewish song called “Arbetlose-Marsch”.

It is taken from the CD “Wann, wenn nicht jetzt” by Angelika Sacher und Klaus Bergmaier http://www.arbeiterinnenlieder.at.tt/ and can be purchased here https://besserewelt.at/wann-jetzt