PROGRAM NOTE
My Concerto for Violin and Orchestra is a work of some 30 minutes cast in three movements. Each movement explores certain facets of the violin’s complex personality, or “soul.” The classically proportioned first movement, taken as a whole, is rather mercurial in character, ranging the gamut from the lyrical and deeply expressive to the “devilish” and menacing. The second movement is the Concerto’s fast and occasionally furious movement, a perpetual motion movement where the motion keeps evolving and reinventing itself, with the rustic, obsessive, tempestuous and sarcastic, all taking turns. Though generally sparser and more intimate than the other two movements, it is the slow last movement, I believe, that functions as the work’s emotional center. From its meditative, prayerful opening solo, through a gradual instrumental build-up leading to a more intense cadenza and a final “resolution,” it is a “farewell” movement dealing with the inevitability of loss.
Thoughts of my mother, whose strength of spirit has been a profoundly significant guiding light throughout my own life, have embedded themselves in the creation of various portions of this work. At the closing of the Concerto, echoes of a familiar melody, one my mother sang to me in my childhood with words of her own creation, appear, gently fading away.
The Concerto was written for violinist Ittai Shapira, whose support and collaboration throughout the creative process have been of great meaning. First performance took place at Carnegie Hall on June 13, 2003, with the Orchestra of Saint Luke’s, Ittai Shapira, solo violin, Charles Hazlewood, conductor.
—Shulamit Ran
In program books, please print the title as follows:
Violin Concerto (2002–3)
(in three movements)
Whenever possible please include the following commissioning credit:
Commissioned by David Bowerman for Ittai Shapira
BACKGROUND AND LATER REFLECTIONS
For quite a number of years I had intermittently thought about composing a Violin Concerto, yet refrained from doing so, not feeling that its time has come. Just as my East Wind (1987) and Mirage (1990) prepared me to undertake the composing of Voices, my flute concerto (2000), I felt that I needed first to penetrate the “soul” of the violin, in its many guises, with the goal of seeking and finding a “violin voice” that I could call my own. Through Inscriptions (1991), my solo violin piece written at the invitation of Sam Magad (Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s long-time, late concertmaster), and especially via my later Yearning (1995) for violin and string orchestra and Soliloquy (1997), its piano trio adaptation, I gradually knew that this voice existed in me, ready to come to full expression in a concerto.
The resulting Violin Concert, composed for violinist Ittai Shapira who premiered, recorded, and performed the work on numerous occasions, is a work of some 30 minutes, cast in three movements. From the onset of my compositional voyage my goal was to start introspectively, then position a fast, ferocious movement in the center of the work, leading to a slow, lyrical apotheosis. Indeed, each movement of the Concerto explores certain facets of what, for me, is the violin’s complex personality, or “soul.”
When the initial discussions in 2002 with the various parties responsible for making this work happen first took place, the thought was brought up to me that it should, in some way, commemorate the events of September 11. I rejected the idea, fearing that it would be a case of too soon, too obvious. There was little question in my mind that there would be a spate of works created by composers recalling this cataclysmic event. I was quite sure I was not ready to join in.
And yet, in composing the work, especially the latter part of the second movement, certain recurring images kept coming back, images I myself could not escape. In some way I found my composing of this portion of the work touched by this event and its aftermath. With the passage of time, it is easier to acknowledge these associations.
And due to the abstract nature of musical expression, and to the fact that a large-scale work such as this one is created over a period of many months, it is possible, even natural, for the composer’s mind to traverse a vast range of feelings, emotions, associations. We are capable of being touched and affected, sometimes simultaneously, by many situations, many people – those closest to us, as well as ones we do not even know. And so, from the work’s very opening phrase for solo violin, thoughts of my mother, Berta Ran, whose strength of spirit has been a profoundly significant guiding light throughout my own life, have embedded themselves in the creation of various portions of this work. I vividly recall the day when I sat with my mother and played on the piano that solo violin melody and said to her “this is YOU!” At the very closing of the Concerto, echoes of a familiar melody, a lullaby my mother sang to me in my childhood with words of her own creation, appear, gently fading away.
The official first performance took place at Carnegie Hall on June 13, 2003, with the Orchestra of Saint Luke’s, Ittai Shapira, solo violin, Charles Hazlewood, conductor. A week earlier, on June 5, 2003, the Concerto was recorded in front of an invited audience for BBC Radio 3’s program Discovering Music, a recording later released on Albany Records.
—Shulamit Ran
INFORMATION
Commissioned by
David Bowerman
for Ittai Shapira
Premiere: June 13, 2003
Carnegie Hall, NYC
Ittai Shapira, violin solo
Charles Hazlewood, conductor
Orchestra of Saint Luke’s
Duration: c. 32’
RECORDING
Ittai Shapira, violin; BBC Concert Orchestra, Charles Hazlewood, conductor; on SHULAMIT RAN, Albany Records Troy 970
SHEET MUSIC
Available from your favorite sheet music seller or directly from Theodore Presser:
Solo Violin and Piano Reduction ;
Full Orchestra Concerto.