Altvioolconcert, Serenades, Altvioolsonate (1990)

"Willy Burkhard was born near Berne, Switzerland. In 1932, Burkhard suffered an attack of tuberculosis. Throughout the 1930s, Burkhard was confined to sanatoriums and lived through the help of friends; his pursuit of composition began to increase at this time as a means to help pay the bills while he recuperated. By 1942, Burkhard was sufficiently recovered to accept a position teaching at the conservatory in Zurich, and he kept it until he died at age 55 in 1955. Burkhard was quite prolific for a composer who seldom enjoyed the bloom of health; his worklist runs to 98 published opus numbers and nearly twice that amount in unpublished compositions. Whereas his early compositions are post-Romantic in style, by 1930 Burkhard entered his mature style, reminiscent of Hindemith and his countryman Frank Martin, but a tad more bitter harmonically. At the very end of his life, Burkhard adopted some aspects of twelve-tone composition, but always composed within a basical tonal framework." (Uncle Dave Lewis, Allmusic)