Michael Berkeley - Concerto for Violin

for solo violin and full orchestra The Concerto starts with a percussive summons to a ritual. Over this the acoustic violin keens and wails, growing increasingly more agitated. The thematic source of the opening music becomes clear in the elegiac, slow middle movement which recapitulates At A Solemn Wake with the accompaniment formed by harps and celesta. The ritual summons returns to trigger the final, fast section and to discover the soloist now armed with the electric violin. As the closing bars arrive the central theme reappears and reveals its own source: the notes Bach used to spell out the letters B.A.C.H. in the closing bars of The Art of Fugue - as far as we can tell, the last music he ever wrote - and which simply stops mid-sentence. But here in the final moments of the concerto the acoustic violin alights on a shaft of hope and light, though an angry drum has the final say. 9780193406070