Solo recital in Leiden, Netherlands

This coming weekend I travel to Leiden for a solo violin recital at the Stadsgehoorzaal, consisting of some of the most incredible and also demanding pieces in the violin repertoire: Solo violin pieces by Bach, Biber, Ysaye, Glass, Berio and Bartok. This should be a fun Sunday morning! 🙂

It will be good to return to the Stadsgehoorzaal after the crazy Brexit Weekend there last March. It will be in the Aalmarktzaal, a recently-converted market building behind the main Stadsgehoorzaal structure, which now boasts a 335-seat hall, brilliantly suited to chamber music performance.

The concert will present a wonderful showcase of the diverse array of music written for solo violin. The first half centres around a movement from one of Bach’s iconic violin partitas, which is framed by a selection of works taking direct influence from Bach’s solo violin works, indisputable cornerstones of the repertoire. Extracts from Philip Glass’s beautiful Partita for Solo Violin come after Belgian virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata, which quotes directly from another of Bach’s Partitas, and Berio’s mesmeric Sequenza VIII is a self-proclaimed tribute to the Chaconne from Bach’s Partita in D minor, the same movement which I will play. The second half of the programme is made up of two more core works for solo violin: Biber’s Passacaglia is the final movement of his well-known series of Rosary Sonatas (also known as the Mystery Sonatas), and the concert will conclude with Bartók’s famously-virtuosic Sonata for Solo Violin, originally written for Yehudi Menuhin.

Tickets for the concert can be found via this link.

Daniel Rowland | Stadsgehoorzaal Leiden | Sun 12 January | 11:30am

Ysaÿe Solo Violin Sonata in A minor, op. 27, no. 2
Glass Partita for solo violin (prologue)
Bach Violin Partita no. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004, Chaconne
Glass Partita for solo violin (songs)
Berio Sequenza VIII
Biber Rosary Sonata no. 16 in G minor, Passacaglia
Bartók Sonata for solo violin, Sz. 11