Violinist Augustin Hadelich selects seven of the greatest works for violin by American composers.
Best American violin works
Samuel Barber: Violin Concerto
When I perform this piece in Europe, I am sometimes asked where I discovered it, as though I dug it up in an attic. In the US, though, it is one of the most popular violin concertos. Barber’s music is lush and heartfelt, with none of the self-consciousness that some of his contemporaries felt about writing Romantic music during the time of modernism.
For this piece to work you have to play it with a kind of innocence, without succumbing to the temptation to do too many slides. It’s not meant to be a cheese fest, and is in fact a deeply moving work.
John Adams – Road Movies
John Adams is a master of Minimalism, and here he does a wonderful job of capturing the joys of driving in America. The first movement conveys the relaxed feeling of travelling down a long road. You feel the engine, wheels and maybe some potholes (roads in America can be really bad; you wouldn’t hear so many potholes if John Adams was German.)
The second movement is languid, evoking a desert landscape or a traffic jam on a summer’s day, while the third movement is like fast highway driving – by the end, I’m euphoric.
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson – Louisiana Blues Strut
Perkinson had a varied career: he wrote serious music, arrangements and music for TV and commercials. This composition starts playfully, in the Blues style, with a real swagger to it, but there are all sorts of complex rhythmic tricks to surprise the audience, and sometimes the key goes off to weird places. What’s difficult is that it has to be played with ‘swing’ (which is hard enough for classical players), but not so much that it distorts the syncopations. So you have to turn the swing on and off constantly. It’s rhythmically one of the hardest pieces I know, but enormously fun for the audience, who will often clap along.
More of the best American violin works
Amy Beach: Romance
I sometimes find late Romanticism a bit emotionally exhausting, but in this short piece by Amy Beach it’s just gorgeous. It’s a slow, sentimental work for violin and piano in a similar vein to Elgar's Salut d’amour, and it’s one of the best examples of its genre. It really pulls at your heart strings and yes, the way that Beach enjoys every suspension is quite indulgent. But there’s a real pleasure in playing something that’s so sweet.
Charles Ives – Sonata No. 4, ‘Children’s Day’
Charles Ives always swam against the tide. In this piece, he evokes the memory of a religious children’s camp he attended in the 1870s. There was a lot of communal music-making at these camps, and in this piece, you hear several songs sung at the same time from different rooms in different keys, until eventually it gets quite cacophonous.
I find it joyful but also nostalgic: you can imagine the soundscape of this camp, and you get the sense that these are intense memories for Ives. The slow movement, with its slow hymns, is really transporting.
Leonard Bernstein – Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium)
Although this piece is loosely inspired by the Symposium, Plato’s Socratic dialogue about the nature of love, I wish Leonard Bernstein hadn’t referred to this in the title. The name makes audiences expect something intellectual and hard to understand when, in fact, it’s full of joy.
There are beautiful moments of lyricism in the slow movement, while the rest is more playful and jazzy. It works best when players can connect with its warmth, as well as its elements of dance and jazz.
Eddie South – Black Gypsy
South was a violinist and prodigy, who grew up in Chicago in the early-20th century. He was black, so couldn’t have a classical career in America. Instead, he played in jazz bands and travelled to Europe, where he met Django Reinhardt – godfather of Gypsy jazz – and absorbed many influences before returning to America. Black Gypsy is an effective little showpiece – jazzy, charming, sentimental – and one that doesn’t take itself too seriously. I’m sure if the music were easier to get hold of, it would be played all the time.
Who is Augustin Hadelich?
Born in Italy to German parents, Augustin Hadelich was a child prodigy who studied both violin and piano. He went on to attend the Juilliard School and, in 2006, won first prize at the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Since then, he has become one of the world’s best-known soloists, and regularly performs with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw. His new album American Road Trip – a journey across the vast US landscape – is out now.
