NOVEMBER – DECEMBER 2013 - Mondavi Center

GIL SHAHAM
wide-spanned chords that serve as
harmonic pillars, establishing a stately
underlying chordal pulse that supports
the movement’s vinelike and expansive
melodic lines.
The second movement is a fugal
Allegro, right out of the Corellian
playbook. However, Bach was never
one to follow tradition slavishly, and
here he enlivens the standard template
of subjects-separated-by-episodes by
interleaving his fugal elements with
glittering single-line passagework
that could have stepped right out of a
virtuoso concerto. Bach’s astounding
ingenuity at implying a full complement
...near-nonstop sixteenth
notes erupt from the
strings like so many
wheels whirring and
gears clicking...
of polyphonic voices with just a few
strings was noted by admirers from
early on. Even after Bach’s own
polyphonically-enhanced transcriptions
for organ (BWV 539) and lute (BWV
1000), not to mention the passing of
almost three centuries, the solo violin
original has lost none of its capacity to
inspire and astonish.
The third-place Siciliano returns
us to song, a Bachian aria that brings
both soloist and accompaniment to
vivid life via the four strings of a solo
violin. Gentle and faintly melancholic,
the major-mode movement provides
the perfect foil for the conclusion, a
minor-key Presto that reminds us of the
18th century’s fascination with all things
scientific and mechanical. Resembling
a finger-bending keyboard fantasia,
near-nonstop sixteenth notes erupt from
the strings like so many wheels whirring
and gears clicking, in a virtuoso moto
perpetuo finale that brings the sonata
to an appropriately dazzling close.
—Scott Foglesong
PARTITA NO. 1 FOR SOLO VIOLIN
IN B MINOR, BWV 1002
Suites (partitas in Italian) make up
a substantial percentage of Bach’s
instrumental works. Consider the 18
keyboard suites, divided into six each
English Suites, French Suites, and Partitas,
plus the substantial “French Ouverture”
Partita and a few oddball remainders.
Bach also wrote suites for solo flute,
orchestra, lute, and solo cello in addition
to the three partitas for solo violin.
Given the dance suite’s international
provenance, Bach routinely mixed Italian
and French dance dialects, despite
their often striking differences—such
as the zippy Italian corrente versus the
stately, rhythmically complex French
courante. Although Bach routinely
organized his keyboard suites around
four standardized dances—Allemande,
Courante, Sarabande, Gigue—he took a
more idiosyncratic approach in the three
violin partitas, no doubt recognizing the
unique requirements of writing for a solo
string instrument.
In the B Minor Partita for Solo Violin,
Bach provides four dance movements,
each followed by an étude-like variation
called a “double.” (This is the only
suite in which Bach sustained such a
scheme throughout.) Listeners lacking
a program might be confused by the
opening Allemanda, thinking that they
are hearing the stately dotted-rhythm
opening of an ouverture à la française.
Certainly the Allemanda represents
the French style at its most grand and
ceremonious, but the following Double
abandons the Gallic character in favor of
smoothly arpeggiated (i.e., chordal) lines
that rise and fall with almost hypnotic
regularity as they outline the movement’s
underlying harmonies.
The rest of the suite is resolutely
Italianate. The bubbly, perpetualmotion
second dance is actually a
Corrente, but in keeping with Bach’s
overall label-agnostic cosmopolitanism,
many editions (including the Bach
Gesellschaft) dub it as a Courante. On
the page the movement might look as
though it consists of a single melodic
line, but to the ear the situation is
markedly different: at least three voices
are easily audible, especially a high
soprano that etches out brisk two-note
figures answered by arpeggios in a
middle voice and supported by a solid
bass line down below. The Corrente’s
virtuosic stance is proudly unabashed,
but that’s nothing compared to its
Double, which halves the note values and
turns a dance into a scamper.
The Sarabande follows the traditional
Italian vein with fetching lyricism
over steady, regular chord changes.
Movements such as this, featuring
numerous instances of four-note
chords, led to sincere but misguided
efforts in the 20th century to design a
special violin bow that could be quickly
loosened to play four strings at once.
Such gimmicks are not only unhistoric
but unnecessary; sensitive technique
and careful attention to sonority
will ensure success in playing Bach’s
expansive chords. The Double transforms
the Sarabande’s block harmonies into
lilting and graceful arpeggios.
Bach chose an alternative to the
Gigue for his finale, a Tempo di Borea,
a.k.a. bourrée, a dance normally found
between the Sarabande and Gigue of
a traditional suite. Jumpy, athletic and
vivacious, both the Tempo di Borea and
its perpetual-motion Double provide
a fine and festive wrap-up to the
proceedings. —Scott Foglesong
SUITE NO. 2 FOR SOLO VIOLIN
WILLIAM BOLCOM
(Born May 26, 1938, in Seattle, Wash.)
I’d wished to learn the violin when
young, but for several reasons (including
the theft of my grandfather’s Sears
“Stradivarius” from the family car), I never
got to learn to play; I still wish I had. I
had to settle for learning how to write
for the violin by working with violinists
from a young age—in fact a principal
joy for me as a composer has been to
write for others what I might have been
delighted to be able to perform myself—
but the added dividend is that writing
for someone else can then become a
portrait of the performer. That makes
it actually more gratifying for me than
writing for myself to play, a thing I rarely
do nowadays.
My first solo violin suite was written
at the request of Sergiu Luca, who
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