Chaconne - fantaisie
for violin solo
Witold Szalonek’s Chaconne-fantaisie for solo violin, composed in 1997, was inspired by a Baroque masterpiece: the Ciaccona from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita no. 2 in D minor for solo violin (BWV 1004). We also hear in this composition echoes of Karol Szymanowski and of tunes from the Tatra Mountains.
This work is dedicated to the outstanding Polish violinist Wanda Wiłkomirska. It is addressed primarily to performing musicians, whom Szalonek called ‘co-composers’. He believed that such artists, by selecting the optimum means of performance, revealed sound qualities that could only arise when his works were being interpreted. Produced here from the violin – a traditional instrument – are new sonorities characteristic of the whole of Szalonek’s oeuvre. The Chaconne-fantaisie displays an impressive wealth of colouristic means. Very much to the fore here is the characteristic colour as ‘an immanent element of that which is heard’ – colour that is so crucial to a sonoristic composer.
This work reveals the remarkable world of Szalonek’s imagination. Making use of the traditional form of the chaconne, he leaves the soloist ample possibilities for interpretation – avec fantaisie – particularly in terms of agogic shifts, and also in the way the narrative is led. This recompenses performers for the potential difficulties with reading the complicated score. In Chaconne-fantaisie, the soloist displays the whole spectrum of the violin’s sonoristic capacities, especially part playing, producing contrasts of sound through characteristic figurations with ‘hidden polyphony’, juxtaposing playing in different registers, playing arco and pizzicato in alternation, double stops and chords.
Lilianna Moll-Gerlich
translated by John Comber
- Series: Strumento
- ISMN 979-0-2740-3530-3
- Number of pages: 20
- Cover: softcover
- No. of edition: 1
- Published: 2021
- Type: instrumental solo
- Size: N4 vertical (235x305 mm)
Other titles in the series
Jean Baptiste Accola
Concerto in A minor
Buy in the new PWM bookstore13,00 EUR Suggested retail price.
Grażyna Bacewicz
Easy Duets on Folk Themes
Buy in the new PWM bookstore15,00 EUR Suggested retail price.
Other author's publications
Witold Szalonek
Concertino for Flute and Chamber Orchest
Buy in the new PWM bookstore44,00 EUR Suggested retail price.
Włodzimierz Kotoński
Anthology of Contemporary Music - Oboe
Buy in the new PWM bookstore18,00 EUR Suggested retail price.
Violin solo
Witold Krotkiewski
Double-Stops Exercises
Buy in the new PWM bookstore8,00 EUR Suggested retail price.
Eugenia Umińska
Study of Scales and Arpeggios
Buy in the new PWM bookstore15,00 EUR Suggested retail price.