Category Archives: Violin

Performed by Glenn Murray

This work represents my first attempt at writing a substantial work for the violin and I am thrilled to dedicate it to my dear friend, Glenn Murray. Glenn and I have beed friends for twenty years now and it is largely thanks to him that I have been able to find the inspiration to write this work. Over the years Glenn has shared not only his wealth of string playing knowledge but also well his great collection of violin recordings with me.

I purposely set out to write a violin work that is different from most of the other standard repertoire works for the violin. Each movement represents a style of music that I enjoy writing and listening to and it is hoped that performers that select this work to play with also listen to the musical styles that each movement requires some aural awareness of. After all, I believe that as composers that we can never fully write everything that we hear in our heads on the page and that at least 30 percent or more of the stylistic content and tonal nuances has to be provided by the performer’s experience and technical expertise of the style that they are interpreting. Some of the more obvious stylistic forms present in this work are:

• Romantic Music of the 18-19th century,
• Romantic styled movie string music.
• Cuban, Latin and tango music and in particular the music of Astor Piazzolla.
• The virtuosic style of Pagannini, JS Bach and rock music in the style of the 1970-’80’s will be called upon in the 4th movement and to a much lesser degree that of funk and jazz in the cadenza.

Cheers and enjoy! Andy Firth (Sept. 2012).