Concerto for Violin

Hagai Shaham - violin | Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon-LeZion | Conductor: Yaron Gottfired (2004)

The Violin Concerto was commissioned by the Israel Symphony-Rishon LeZion Orchestra for the Israeli violinist Hagai Shaham, and dedicated to my late father Daniel, who was a very gifted violinist himself. My father was self taught; he played also other instruments, and felt at home in many different styles. For me he was the personification of the "Klezmer" – the real and natural everyday musician who has nothing but his two ears to rely on, and whose intuition, sensitivity and inborn talent enable him to play wonderfully not only Jewish Folk music but every other style he chose, be it classical jazz or popular music.

When I set out to compose the concerto, I envisioned my father and sought to express the multifaceted nature that characterized him. Beyond my contemporary classical language, the work contains echoes of a traditional Ashkenazi "Tzur Mishelo" melody (a Sabbath song), which surfaces intermittently, as if attempting to break into the foreground. Alongside it are jazz elements, sometimes expressed rhythmically, and at other times melodically or harmonically.

The three movements of the concerto are based on shared thematic material, primarily derived from the interval of a fourth, which also opens the Sabbath song, partially quoted in the composition.

The concerto follows a traditional structure of movements: fast, slow, fast. However, the internal form of each of them does not align with any typical formal models of the concerto, as it developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, except for the principle of a soloist confronting or collaborating with the orchestral forces.

The work was composed during my artist residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland.