Vienna Glass Armonica Duo

glass armonica and verrophone

Austrian musicians, Christa and Gerald Schönfeldinger discovered the world of glass music at the beginning of the 1990s. They graduated violin classes in music academies and were orchestra members. The glass armonica attracted their attention while they attended an exhibition of historical musical instruments at the Hofburg in Vienna. Their interested in this instrument increased so they visited the musical instrument designer and builder Sascha Reckert in Munich, who is a specialist in the field of glass instruments. They discovered a verrophone there, too, which Reckert himself had developed. A verrophone consists of open-ended glass tubes arranged in various sizes. It was the beginning of the Vienna Glass Armonica Duo: Christa as glass armonica player and Gerald as verrophone player. Thus they rediscovered and revived the glass music, which enjoyed a sensational wave of popularity in the 18th century.
Today the couple is among the world's leading performers on the glass armonica and the verrophone.
The ensemble's repertoire ranges from the traditional standard works for glass armonica (W. Mozart, J. Reichardt, C. Röllig, A. Schulz) to orchestral and opera literature (Donizetti, Saint-Saëns, R. Strauss) as well as numerous arrangements (e.g. Mozart, Grieg, Satie, Morricone) and avant-garde works (e.g. Arvo Pärt, Jörg Widmann).