Frank Corcoran

irish composer

SOME YEARS AGO – ON MY VIOLIN CONCERTO

Yes, climbing , descending, the singing human voice of the solo instrument, its joy
and radiance and despair and roughness and cantability as my
violin threads its line and lovely trellis-work up
from the open G string to the highest regions of the E string.

String joy. Great energy ! Great . Sing it ! In this opening movement
the short brass and wind chorales punctuate the violin´s Amhrán Mór, Great
Song. Always my opening melodic idea and a second little ” lusingando”
playfulness is the spiel . In the middle of this movement the
cadenza is ( – well, as it always is ) the soloist´s
show-off acrobatics, the violinist painting his canvas with his
sparkle of ideas, but they are all won from the opening tones ( as in
Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms… ) , all woven into the orchestral
canvas.

The Second Movement is pure melody ( But can we in this 21.st c.
still compose a Lied ? Yes, we can ! ), lovely and ravishing .
Four times comes this Lied ( built again from my
building-blocks of that First Movement opening ) . In German ” Lied”
( “Song” ) is close to ” Leid” ( ” Suffering” ) . The central Cadenza
distills the
very essence of both. Then, just before the close, the violins have
the singing before the soloist´s final lovely pizz. and sigh.

The final Third Movement has a Mozartian
energy with its scurrying string semiquavers,
racing towards its end. ” In my end is my beginning” – it sums
up, it quotes the First and Second Mov.s before
pitting itself again against strong orchestral forces,
tiny David against his Goliathic orchestra, light and shadow and
gossamer explosions and clouds and heavenly regions, the whole thing . My
solo instrument has the last say, its last sigh cut off by low
celli and basses.

FRANK CORCORAN

Posted under: Humble Hamburg Musings

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