Verbier Festival - AUGUSTIN HADELICH

Composed in the early 1700s, Bach’s six sonatas and partitas for solo violin – his own instrument – pushed their period’s violinistic technique to its absolute limits, through music of immense profundity and intimacy.

Sonata No. 3 in C major is cast in slow-fast-slow-fast sonata chiesa form. A darkly rocking Adagio opens, its quadruple stopping creating both rich textures, and the impression of labour. By far the most substantial movement is the following glowing fugue, with its subject based on the Lutheran chorale for Pentecost, “Komm heiliger Geist” or “Come Holy Ghost.” Half way through, Bach suddenly reverses both this subject and its descending chromatic counter subject to create an inverted palindrome, meaning the countersubject is now ascending. A spacious Largo follows, before we’re danced to the finish line with an Allegro assai abounding in implied harmonies and countermelodies.

Written in 1976 for Sanford Allen, the first African American member of the New York Philharmonic, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s three short Blue/s Forms play on jazz blues notes, where the third and seventh degrees of the scale are flattened. Plain Blue/s opens, full of bluesily sliding chords, after which Just Blue/s employs similar techniques, but with its mood more melancholic. Jettin’ Blue/s brings things to an upbeat conclusion with its fast leaping figures carrying shades of Paganini.

Unlike his solo sonatas, Bach’s three solo partitas are in the free form of the sonata da camera. Partita No. 2 in D minor opens with a dark-toned and steady Allemande. Next comes a skipping, triple-time Courante, before a short Sarabande – a slow, mournful and stately triple-time court dance. An energetic Gigue follows, its dark tonality interspersed with flashes of major tonality light. Then the grand surprise – a gargantuan Chaconne representing a musical cathedral carved over a four-bar choral progression, two minor sections encasing a central major section.

Ticketing at Gotham Coworking : 06 to 30 July 2023, 09:00 - 17:00, 09am - 05pm
Rue de Médran 12, 1936 Verbier

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