18th November 2022
There’s a real treat in the Bardi Symphony Orchestra’s concert at De Montfort Hall next Sunday. As well as Pictures at an Exhibition and Sibelius’ Finlandia, the Orchestra are also performing ‘The Fiddler’s Tale’ a violin concerto composed and performed by leader Adam Summerhayes. Originally commissioned by the Helix Ensemble this concert marks its Bardi premiere and the composer described his piece as follows…
Whether this is a tale telling of a fiddler or whether it is a tale told by a fiddler, I am not sure – the narrative told itself as I wrote it and it seems counter-productive to try to describe it in words: the musical story is more subtle than my words can tell and seems to shift every time I play the music.
The concerto owes something to medieval music, to minimalism and to pan-European folk music. Parallel 4ths and 5ths are a feature as are ostinatos, grounds and homophonic melodies with primitive rhythmic accompaniment – the modal world it inhabits grew organically from these elements.
The music is in one continuous span in 5 parts. Parts 2 and 4 function as slow movements and part 3 as something like a scherzo. The first interlude meditatively prepares the space for the second movement and the second interlude is reminiscent of the traditional concerto cadenza. The first part sets ideas in motion that eventually culminate in Part 5, after which the postlude ties things up in a somewhat post-apocalyptic conclusion … a conclusion that returns the music of the beginning of the work … it could seamlessly go round on a loop …
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