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Programme Note

Composer Note:

The Partita for Violin is in eight parts. The seven-note theme heard at the outset acts as the source for all that will follow. The intervals of the fourth, fifth, and third outlining a ninth are followed by a seventh with an upward yearning and then a precipitous drop. This sequence creates a contour that, evolving, acts as the catalyst for the work. Each of the eight parts explores a different facet of the instrument. All the movements though emotionally and technically different, are bound by a common intervallic relationship. They portray an interior vision of one remembered or imagined, of moments felt or dreamt. The whole tries to capture a mood, a color, a tapestry of sound extolling an instrument I dearly love and an ethos I cannot deny. When asked over the years, “What is you favorite work?”, I would walk away from the question, but when I ask it of myself, I at once hear Bach’s Partita No. 4 in D minor for Violin. Once in a while the B-minor Mass intrudes, but today as I write these words the Suite is closest to me.

— Ezra Laderman