Ysaÿe

Photo (colorized): Deborah Turbeville

Music that conveys this texture of study and yet finds space for other ears—listeners’—is rare. The masterpieces here have their own loneliness: before Ysaÿe they are limited to the three sonatas and three partitas of Bach and the twenty-four caprices by Paganini. These works are on Ysaÿe’s mind as he writes his six sonatas at his home in the Belgian coastal resort of Het Zoute in 1923/24. They are under the fingers of his mind. He is alone but not alone. There are ghosts in the room.

Photo (colorized): Deborah Turbeville

Photo (colorized): Deborah Turbeville

Playing Ysaÿe, the violinist will be revisiting his own memories and making his own discoveries. He too is continuing, through this hour or so, a path going back decades, to when he was a boy studying with his father. Born in Salzburg in 1961, he was trained in the Mozarteum and in master classes with Max Rostal and Nathan Milstein. In 1979 he made his debut, at the Musikverein in Vienna, and published his first recording. Like Ysaÿe a century before, he established himself as a musician with a personal vision and an inquiring mind, a player of passion and accuracy, an inspiring quartet leader, a conductor who sparks musical excitement even when he is not simultaneously performing as concerto soloist, and a friend of composers (in his case including Holliger and Kurtág). All of this is here, at the point of the bow. He burns himself into the music and disappears.

Photo (colorized): Deborah Turbeville

Photo (colorized): Deborah Turbeville

The violinist has to cultivate his own aloneness, shut out (or digest) all the advice and warnings in order to pursue his dialogue with the text, performing not as if in the twentieth century, the eighteenth or the twenty-first but in that never-now where music takes place. Hear him. Right at the beginning the four-note chords and the motivic insistence (on the rising minor second especially) place us not so much with Bach or Ysaÿe as with weight and the struggle for the next step. Towards the close of this movement the shadow sonata includes its own shadow in a passage played sul ponticello, near the bridge. And then there are the endings, the points achieved: a chime of distant light; a wild high minor tenth, like a scream; the same interval softened and put into the major; the inevitable and decisive fifth.

Photo (colorized): Deborah Turbeville

Photo (colorized): Deborah Turbeville

The third sonata is a single movement, whose title, ‘Ballade’, suitably suggests a Chopin-like or Brahmsian combination of virtuosity and narrative thrust. Accordingly the main body of the movement, in D minor, is a chain of extensions from an assertive theme in proud dotted rhythm. Such passionate music could not just start up out of nowhere; it has to be preceded by an introduction (a gearing-up largely in double stops) and what one might call a pre-introduction, ‘in modo di recitativo’, slow and featuring a drift of chromatic melody.

Photo (colorized): Deborah Turbeville

Photo (colorized): Deborah Turbeville

Different again, the fifth sonata, in G major, is an essay in the picturesque. The first movement, ‘L’Aurore’ (The Dawn), achieves an impression of sunrise in its opening two slow phrases, lifting from the open fifth at the bottom of the instrument’s range, G-D. Following this, the image is created again much more expansively. The pure diatonic ascent of the initial segment now, on repetition, falls to a harsh dissonance, and this idea—D-E-B-F, later widened to D-G-E-B flat—is developed, rising in register and regaining harmonic clarity to end with dazzling arpeggios. The same idea is then the seed for a ‘Danse rustique’, the motif appearing in all the movement’s several phases.

Photo (colorized): Deborah Turbeville

Photo (colorized): Deborah Turbeville

The master of them all, reflecting on a life with the violin that is almost over, conveys what he has learned. There is sagacity here, and rich experience. But what he writes is—in each note, each ornament, each double stop, each feathery flurry of sixths—a prompt for action. The violinist looks at the script. He has his own ghosts in the room with him, and they surely include Ysaÿe alongside Bach and Paganini. He lifts his bow. He acts.

Photo (colorized): Deborah Turbeville

Photo by fine art photographer Kenda North, from her 2017 series Urban Pools

Photo by fine art photographer Kenda North, from her 2017 series Urban Pools

Making love in such a state was magical: Supple, responsive, never making a wrong move, you, Inès found, were an inspired lover.

Photo by fine art photographer Kenda North, from her 2017 series Urban Pools

For your part, you found thrilling her mix of sensitivity, skill and ability to surprise.

Photo by fine art photographer Kenda North, from her 2017 series Urban Pools

RICHARD JONATHAN, ‘MARA, MARIETTA: A LOVE STORY IN 77 BEDROOMS’  —  READ THE FIRST CHAPTER

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Probably the earliest extended work for unaccompanied violin is HEINRICH IGNAZ FRANZ VON BIBER’s Passacaglia (c.1675), comprising sixty-five variations on the descending tetrachord G–F–Eb–D, included as the last in the collection of sixteen ‘Rosary’ Sonatas. But there are also several shorter examples incorporated in John Playford’s The Division Violin (1684) and NICOLA MATTEIS’ four books of Ayres of the Violin (1676 & 1685). JOHANN PAUL VON WESTHOFF’s Suite for violin ‘sans basse’ (1682), the earliest work in this medium in more than one movement, and his six short, four-movement partitas (1696), with their imaginative polyphony, are especially significant as precursors of J. S. Bach’s unaccompanied sonatas and partitas. Numerous solo pieces of interest, variously described, were roughly contemporary with Bach’s monumental contribution. These include Girolamo Laurenti’s fantasia-like Ricercari, a solo fantasia in C minor and a single movement in A minor by Nicola Matteis, a sonata by Francesco Montanari of which the fourth movement is a ‘giga senza basso’, and complete unaccompanied sonatas by Geminiani and PISENDEL. Pisendel’s work, heard by Bach in 1717, appears to have been especially influential. It comprises a rhapsodic Largo punctuated by chords, a binary-form Allegro and a final ‘giga’.

Unaccompanied violin: Isabelle Faust, Rachel Podger, Plamena Nikitassova

J. S. BACH’s three sonatas and three partitas (BWV 1001-6) represent the culmination of Baroque polyphonic writing for a stringed instrument. He wrote them down while in the service of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Clithen, and they survive in an autograph copy (dated 1720) with the title ‘Sei solo. / a / Violino / senza / Basso / accompagnato. / Libro Primo’. However, they may well have been begun at Weimar, where Bach is known to have been more active as a violinist. Particularly remarkable are Bach’s lavish use of multiple stopping to sustain a complete polyphonic texture and his exploitation of ‘polyphonic melody’, in which a single line is made to suggest a fuller texture by constantly shifting between implied voices. Such experiments in texture have caused these works to be misunderstood: Schumann and Mendelssohn, for example, each considered the sustained passages of unaccompanied melody somewhat stark and provided piano accompaniments to ‘improve’ the original solo texture.

Bach, Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin, Alina Ibragimova

Sonatas alternate with partitas in Bach’s original order. Common to all three sonatas is the slow–fast–slow–fast movement-sequence of the sonata da chiesa. The first two movements are coupled together in the manner of an elaborate prelude, written out in improvisatory vein, and an extended fugue, the latter continually alternating between strict polyphony and single-line passagework. The fugue of the G minor sonata (BWV 1001) seems to have held a special place in Bach’s affections—he transcribed it for organ (BWV 539) – but the massive fugue of No. 3 in C (BWV 1003), based closely on a chorale melody, is arguably his most resourceful in the genre. It comprises four separate sections of thematic entries, the second in stretto and the third with the theme in inverted form, and the movement culminates in a final statement of striking polyphonic density. The third movements release the tension and provide welcome tonal relief , while the Allegro or Presto finales share the symmetrical plan of a typical binary suite movement.

Bach, Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin, Isabelle Faust

The three partitas are of more varied and unorthodox design. Fundamentally they comprise studies of dances bolstered up by more substantial, extended movements such as the opening Preludio of the E major partita (No. 3) and the concluding Chaconne (‘Ciaccona’) of No. 2 in D minor. This latter is based upon variations (sixty-four in all) of a single open-ended four-bar phrase built around the descending tetrachord (the very phrase used by Biber in his Passacaglia). Two sections in the minor enclose a central section in the major mode, and the movement displays almost every resource of Bach’s and the violinist’s art. After so many vicissitudes, it culminates in a grand restatement of the main thematic material—unadorned, but with new harmonies towards its close. The B minor partita (No. 1) is ‘fattened up’ by way of its scheme of four pairs of movements, the second of each pair being a simple variation (double) of the first main dance tune, and normally in a faster tempo.

Bach, Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin, Akiko Suwanai

Bach’s celebrated contemporary HANDEL left only an Allegro in G major for unaccompanied violin, but TELEMANN composed twelve notable fantasias for the instrument ‘senza basso’ (1735). Music for solo violin appeared for the first time in Sweden and France, respectively with JOHAN ROMAN’s six Assaggi (1739-40) and Louis-Gabriel Guillemain’s Amusement pour le violon seul Op. 18 (1762). Among the Frenchmen who drew inspiration from Guillemain’s lead were Isidore Bertheaume (Sonate dans le style de Lolli, 1786 ; Sonatas Op. 4, 1786), Jean Baptiste Bédard (Duo, ou moyen agréable d’exercer la double corde), Julien Mathieu (two sets of Duos, ou études pour la double corde), and L’abbé le fils (Suite de jolis airs, incorporated in his Principes, 1761). The Italian contribution comprises Viotti’s Duetto per un violino, Nardini’s celebrated Sonate énigmatique complete with scordatura, and CAMPAGNOLI’s Fugues Op. 10, Polonoises Op. 13, Divertissements Op. 18, Préludes, Op. 12, and his Recueil de 101 pièces faciles et progressive s Op. 20. The Czech Václav Pichl also composed Fugues Op. 41. Apart from James Brooks’s Two Duetts for One Performer on the Violin Op. 4, the remainder of the eighteenth-century repertory emanates from Germany, represented chiefly by Johann Stamitz’s Two Divertimentos, F. W. Rust’s Four Sonatas (1795) and Reichardt’s six Sonate per il violino solo (1778).

Unaccompanied violin: Telemann, Campagnoli, Roman

Early-nineteenth-century composers showed comparatively little interest in the possibilities for solo violin, preferring the greater expressive potential offered by the concerto, sonata and other forms. Apart from those études which found their way into the concert hall (e.g. PAGANINI’s Caprices Op. 1, VIEUXTEMPS’s Etudes de concert Op. 16, ERNST’s Mehrstimmige Studien etc.), only Romberg’s three Etudes ou sonates Op. 32 (1813), David’s Suite in G minor, Jansa’s Sonate brillante (1828), Ole Bull’s Quartet for solo violin (1834) and the various compositions of Paganini (Introduction and Variations on ‘Nel cor più non mi sento’; Duo merveille; Recitative and variations on ‘Deh cari venite’ and ‘Di certi giovani’; and two further variation sets, Tema patriotico and Tema variato) are worthy of mention.

Unaccompanied violin: Vieuxtemps, Paganini, Ernst

Towards the end of the century the medium was taken up again by such composers as REGER, who composed eleven three- or four-movement Sonatas (Op. 42, 1899; Op. 91, 1905) and numerous short works (Chaconne in G minor, Praeludium in E minor Op. posth., Preludes and Fugues Op. 117 Nos. 1-8 and Op. 131a Nos. 1-6) in a neo-Baroque style later imitated by HINDEMITH in his two solo sonatas Op. 31 (1924). Of their German successors the Spanish-born PHILIPP JARNACH contributed numerous works for unaccompanied violin (the sonatas Op. 8, Op. 13, Op. 31 Nos. 1 and 2 and Op. 58 No. 1; a six-movement partita ‘Es steht ein Lind in jenem Tal’ Op. 37 No. 1; and variations on ‘Mozarts Wiegenlied’ Op. 58 No. 2), his individual style being influenced by the type of neo-Classicism cultivated by Busoni.

Unaccompanied violin sonatas: Max Reger, Paul Hindemith, Philipp Jarnach

HENZE’s works for the medium date from his more mature years, the inspiration for his three-movement Solo Violin Sonata (1976) coming from Salvatore Accardo; the Etude philharmonique (1979) followed and was succeeded in turn by his Serenade für Violine solo (1986) written in celebration of Yehudi Menuhin’s seventieth birthday. Henze’s contemporary GISELHER KLEBE studied initially with von Wolfurt and Blacher, but his further studies with Rufer (from 1946) and his instruction in serialism were the most influential towards his stylistic development. This is demonstrated in his two solo sonatas, Opp. 8 (1950) and 20 (1955), the first of which, in two movements, was dedicated to Henze. BERND ALOIS ZIMMERMAN took the developments of Schoenberg as his point of departure for more individual creation in his three-movement Solo Sonata (1950), while a former collaborator with Stockhausen, Rolf Gehlhaar (Naïre, 1983), is among the members of the younger generation in Germany who have attracted international attention. In Austria, Fritz Kreisler deserves brief mention for his Recitative and Scherzo Caprice Op. 6, composed in homage to Ysaÿe. Other notable Austrian contributors to the repertory included Josef Hauer (7 Charakterstücke Op. 56, 1928), who, quite independently from Schoenberg, systematized the ‘law of the twelve notes’ in his compositions; Hanns Jelinek (Sonata Op. 27, 1957), another serialist; the more conservative, eclectic, yet individual Gottfried von Einem (Sonata Op. 47, 1975); and H. K. Gruber, whose Vier Stücke Op. 11 (1963) were composed at a time when he was working with traditional serial techniques.

Unaccompanied violin sonatas: Zimmermann, Henze, Klebe

The works of YSAŸE represent a further peak in the development of the genre, his imaginative and resourceful Variations on Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 taking second place to his Six Sonatas Op. 27 (1924). Each sonata is dedicated to and written in a style appropriate to a celebrated violinist of his time, namely Joseph Szigeti, Jacques Thibaud, George Enescu, Fritz Kreisler, Mathieu Crickboom and Manuel Quiroga. Believed to have been inspired by Szigeti’s playing of Bach’s unaccompanied violin works, Ysaÿe’s sonatas betray Bach’s influence, not least in the complex polyphony and the tonality (G minor, the key of Bach’s first unaccompanied sonata) of No. 1 and in the opening movement (‘Obsession’) of No. 2 in A minor, clearly inspired by the opening Preludio of Bach’s E major partita. The other two movements of No. 2, ‘Malinconia’ and ‘Danse des ombres’, treat the old Dies Irae plainchant, the ‘Danse’ opening with some formidable quadruple stopping in pizzicato. Other notable features of the set include the ghostly tremolo sul ponticello coda of the Grave of No. 1; the rapid alternations of sixths and tenths in passage-work in the single-movement ‘Ballade’ (No. 3); the Sarabande of no. 4, in which different typefaces are used to indicate the voice leading and in which an inner melodic voice plays in left-hand pizzicato; the Presto finale in 5/4 metre of No. 4; the pictorial ideas and Paganiniesque effects in No. 5; and the dance characteristics and virtuosic demands of the single-movement No. 6.

Ysaÿe, Sonatas for Solo Violin: Ibragimova, Zehetmair, Barati

BARTÓK’s swansong for the instrument, his Sonata (1944), represents the culmination of the genre in the twentieth century. Commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin, the work opens with a ‘Tempo di ciacona’ in sonata form, punctuated by a recurrent left-hand pizzicato figure. It continues with a somewhat free ‘Fuga’, the fugal subject being constantly modified during its unconventional course, while the ensuing ternary ‘Melodia’ is muted and illustrates Bartok’s variation technique in its reprise. The mute remains in place for the beginning of the final Presto rondo, originally written in quarter-tones, and is only removed for the contrasting, parlando Hungarian melody.

Christian Tetzlaff | Béla Bartók, Violin Sonata | Sunao Goko

PROKOFIEV’s Sonata in D Op. 115 (1947) is normally regarded as the principal twentieth-century Russian work in the medium. Intended primarily as a pedagogical work, its three movements are somewhat conservative in both technical and musical content while its language is conventionally diatonic. Other Russian contributors have included Stravinsky, who arranged La Marseillaise (1919) and his own Elégie (1944, originally for viola) for solo violin; SHEBALIN, whose Suite (1933) displays the influence of Russian folksong; Kabalevsky, whose one-movement Sonata-monologue (1975) has been included in the concert programmes of many of his compatriots; and SCHNITTKE, whose Canon pour deux violons for violin and tape (violin) and A Paganini (1982) incorporate a variety of technical and interpretative challenges for the performer.

Unaccompanied violin: Prokofiev, Schnittke, Shebalin

In France, IANNIS XENAKIS, of Greek parentage and Romanian birth, is worthy of inclusion here for two works written for Mica Salabert. Mikka (1972) is a gentle, lyrical piece to be played purely and evenly without vibrato, while Mikka ‘S’ (1976), partly written on two staves, ventures into the language of quarter tones. The late 1960s and early 1970s also proved to be an inspirational period for the medium in Italy, for it spawned Petrassi’s Elogio per un’ombra (1971), Maderna’s Widmung (1967) and Pièce pour Ivry per violino (1971), and the ninth in BERIO’s series of sequenzas for solo instruments (1975)—literally musical sequences by their structure—which comments on the relationship between the virtuoso and his instrument. Hilding Rosenberg, arguably the central figure in twentieth-century Swedish music, fused the late Romantic tradition with more radical elements in his oeuvre, which includes three sonatas for solo violin (1921, rev. 1966; 1953; 1963; rev. 1967). The Norwegian contribution to the repertory comprises Sinding’s Suite Op. 123 (1919) and HOLMBOE’s challenging Molto allegro scherzando (1929) and Sonata (1953).

Unaccompanied violin: Holmboe, Xenakis, Berio

Most notable among the contributions to the medium by American immigrants were the two sonatas of Ernst Krenek (1900-87; No. 1, Op. 33, 1924-5; No. 2, Op. 115, 1948), BLOCH’s early Fantasie (1899), and his two three-movement suites (both 1958), both dedicated to Yehudi Menuhin. Bloch’s pupil Roger Sessions was another significant influence on the development of American music through his composition, writings and teaching. His eventual adoption of serialism, albeit in a very individual manner, began with the four-movement solo violin Sonata (1953), dedicated to Robert Gross. Of the numerous American disciples of Nadia Boulanger, VIRGIL THOMSON left a small legacy of violin compositions, among them Portraits (1928-40), eight short pieces for solo violin mostly written in France in 1928. ELLIOTT CARTER, a more progressive Boulanger pupil of a later generation, contributed his brief Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi (1984), while Ross Lee Finney wrote his two-movement Fantasy (1958) at a time when his eclectic, international style was absorbing serial techniques. David Diamond’s studies with Sessions and Boulanger are faithfully reflected in his three-movement Sonata (1959) for Isaac Stern.

Unaccompanied violin: Virgil Thompson, Ernest Bloch, Elliott Carter

One of the most progressive composers for the instrument has been JOHN CAGE, who has enjoyed a productive working relationship with the violinist Paul Zukofsky. Cage’s 59½” for Any Four-String Instrument (1953) and 26’ 1.1499” for a String Player (1955) involve little conventional notation. The production of notes on each of the four strings, as well as other sounds (e.g. using the body of the instrument), is separately graphed, the intention being to indicate specific physical playing techniques rather than to annotate a performance in purely musical terms. Cage’s earlier abstract of Erik Satie’s 12 Petits Chorals forms the basis of his Chorals (1978), which juxtaposes simple notes, unisons and ‘beats’, produced by playing conventional intervals microtonally ‘wrong’. Microtonal inflections are also introduced in Cage’s complex Freeman Études I—XVI (1977-80), which are very specifically annotated with interpretative information. For example, many bowings are prescribed in detail (notably the number of notes to be played in ricochet; and four kinds of martellato) and notes to be played legato, sometimes simulated, are connected with a beam. The two lines below the staff give both the ‘measure’, a constant length of time, and the appearance in time-space of the ictus. The performer should establish a time-length for the ‘measure’ and then maintain that tempo from system to system and from étude to étude. Lou Harrison, a close associate of Cage during World War II, has contributed a more conventional three-movement solo Sonata (1962).

Unaccompanied violin: Freeman Etudes, John Cage

Among the numerous distinguished contributors to the medium who have been based in institutions of higher education are George Perle (two sonatas, 1959 and 1963), Vincent Persichetti (Sonata Op. 10, 1940), Leon Kirchner (Piece, 1985) and, more recently, Benjamin Lees (Invenzione, 1964-5), Samuel Adler (Canto III, 1975), Henri Lazarof (Lyric Suite) and George Rochberg. Rochberg’s Caprice Variations (1970) for solo violin is a set of fifty-one variations on the theme of Paganini’s twenty-fourth caprice, the variations preceding the announcement of the actual theme. More experimental have been CHARLES WUORINEN (The Long and the Short, 1969; Variations, 1973), PHILIP GLASS (Violin Solo Music from ‘Einstein on the Beach’, 1975) and STEVE REICH. Reich’s Violin Phase (1967) was inspired by the sounds produced by multiples of the same instrument, either ‘live’ or in a mixed ‘live-recorded’ context. The work is thus intended either for solo violin with a changing background of pre-recorded tape, or for a quartet of violinists. The background comprises the ‘phasing’ of a simple repeated melodic pattern, which overlaps in a kind of ‘phased canon’ to produce ‘still denser chords and patterns cross-hatched with slowly shifting interior lines. The soloist joins in this aural weaving to provide subtle reinforcement and connection, and is free after a while to abstract notes from the shifting background, to point out chance aural coincidences, or to propose other connections between overlapping phrases.’

Solo violin: Philip Glass, Charles Wuorinen, Steve Reich

Noteworthy in Latin America have been the microtonal experiments of the Mexican JULIAN CARRILLO, whose oeuvre includes six non-microtonal sonatas and numerous pieces with microtones for violin. Meanwhile, the Czech national school was being continued by ALOIS HÁBA, who paid particular attention to the use of microtones as melodic inflections in Moravian folk-songs, eventually evolving his system of quarter-tone and sixth-tone composition. This was intended to extend the possibilities of expression of the semitone system by furnishing it with more delicate sound nuances. His numerous pieces for violin, for example the Fantasie im Vierteltonsystem Op. 9a (1921), Musik für Violine im Vierteltonsystem Op. 9b (1922), Suite für Violine Solo im Sechsteltonsystem Op. 85a (1955) and the Suite für Violine solo im Vierteltonsystem Op. 93 (1962), admirably illustrate this initiative.

Unaccompanied violin(cello): Alois Hába, Julián Carrillo

In Switzerland, HONEGGER’s legacy includes a four-movement Sonata (1940), while the Dutchman Henk Badings composed three sonatas for the instrument (1940, 1951 and 1951). In Greece, one of Skalkottas’s early works was a remarkable Sonata (1925), while the prolific Polish composer Grayna Bacewicz left two sonatas and numerous caprices for solo violin, as well as several miscellaneous pieces, some with a pedagogical purpose. PETER SCULTHORPE synthesized Australasian traditional styles with advanced Western techniques in order to create a national identity. Particularly notable is his series of pieces entitled Irkanda, inaugurated by his solo violin piece Irkanda I (1955) and culminating in Irkanda IV (vn, str, perc, 1961). His other solo pieces Australia Variations (1954), Sonata (1954), and Alone (1976) and his numerous works for string quartet between them exploit the full gamut of technical resources—double and multiple stopping, natural and artificial harmonics, arco/pizzicato alternation, tapping the body of the instrument, etc. In Japan, composers such as Michio Mamiya (Sonata, 1970), Joji Yuasa (My Blue Sky No. 3, 1977), Ryohei Hirose (Asura, 1975), Kazuo Fukushima (Uninterrupted Poem, 1953), Makato Moroi (Les Farces, 1970), Yujiro Fukushima (Sonata, 1965), Mitsuaki Hayama (Sonata, 1964), TOSHI ICHIYANAGI (Scenes III, 1980), Yuji Takahashi (Rosace I, amp vn, 1967; Sieben Rosen hat ein Strauss, 1982) and Toshio Hosokowa (Winter Bird, 1978) have all played a part in broadening the solo violin repertory.

Unaccompanied violin: Peter Sculthorpe, Arthur Honegger, Toshi Ichiyanagi

Notable among the recent generations of British composers who have been particularly attracted to writing for unaccompanied violin are LENNOX BERKELEY (Introduction and Allegro Op. 24, 1949; Theme and Variations Op. 33 No. 1, 1950), Elisabeth Lutyens (Aptote, 1948; Prelude Op. 133), Wellesz (sonatas Op. 36, 1923, and Op. 72, 1953, rev. 1959), Gerhard (Chaconne, 1959), Alan Bush (Three Raga Melodies Op. 58, 1961), ARNOLD COOKE (Sonata, 1976), Franz Reizenstein (Sonata Op. 46, 1968), Gordon Jacob (Sonatina, 1954), Benjamin Frankel (sonatas Op. 13, 1946, and Op. 39, 1962), David Blake (Fantasia, 1989), Richard Rodney Bennett (Four Improvisations, 1955; Sonata No. 2, 1964), PETER DICKINSON (Fantasia, 1959), Cornelius Cardew (The Worker’s Song, n.d.), John McCabe (Maze Dances, 1973), Edward Harper (Solo, 1971), Sebastian Forbes (Violin Fantasy No. 1, 1975, and No. 2, 1979), Robin Holloway (Sonata, 1982), Brian Ferneyhough (Intermedio alla ciaccona, 1986), Michael Finnissy (All the Trees They Are so High, 1977, and Song 13, 1971), Colin Matthews (Partita Op. 7, 1975), Giles Swayne (Canto, 1973), Paul Patterson (Luslawice Variations, 1984), Edward McGuire (Rant, 1977), Michael Berkeley (Funerals and Fandangos, 1983) and Dominic Muldowney (One, from Arcady, 1976).

Unaccompanied violin: Peter Dickinson, Arnold Cooke, Lennox Berkeley

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