Augustin Hadelich’s Atterbury Sessions Recital

At the beginning of this year, when I announced the plans for Lara St. John’s schedule for The Atterbury House Sessions, I noted that the accompanist for the recital by violinist Augustin Hadelich had not yet been announced. It turned out that (s)he had not been announced because (s)he would have been superfluous. Hadelich had prepared a program entirely for solo violin.

Augustin Hadelich performing his Atterbury House Sessions recital (screen shot from the video being discussed)

There were minor modifications to the selections named this past January, but the program was no less engaging for those alterations. Most interesting was the attention given to Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, an Afro-American twentieth-century composer who was equally at home composing classical, jazz, and film music. He was also the only composer that provided two selections on the program. Hadelich began his performance with Perkinson’s three-movement suite Blue/s Forms, composed in 1979. The second offering also explored blues rhetoric, “Louisiana Blues Strut: A Cakewalk.” While I have been consistently impressed with Hadelich’s disciplined technique, I was struck by how, with all that discipline, he knew how to touch just the right nerves to capture the spirit of the blues.

Between these two selections Hadelich reminded his audience (tacitly, he never spoke during the entire video) that he had recorded all 24 caprices for solo violin that Niccolò Paganini collected as his Opus 1. Hadelich chose the ninth of these in E major, usually known by its nickname “La Chasse” (the hunt). In this ternary form piece the strings imitate both horns and flutes in the outer sections, while the middle section goes to town with double stops and ricochet (bouncing) bowing. I have listened to Hadelich play selections from Opus 1 as encore offerings, and I have been consistently impressed by his discipline and calm demeanor as he jumps through all of Paganini’s hoops.

He then concluded the program with Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1004 partita in D minor (having also recorded the complete set of solo sonatas and partitas). This is probably best known for the mammoth chaconne in the final movement. Once again, there was no arguing with his technical and expressive approaches to the music. However, given the rich content that preceded this selection, I found myself missing the usual customs of a recital. An intermission break prior to the Bach performance would have given conscious attention a bit of rest before taking on all that both Bach and Hadelich had to offer through this music.

Fortunately, now that the live-stream has concluded, there is now a YouTube Web page of the entire program.