Concerto & sonata

I am pleased to announce that I will be recording Eric Funk’s Vili: Concerto for Violin Alone, Op. 109, along with Pehr Henrik Nordgren’s Sonata for Solo Violin, Op. 104. These works were composed within a decade of each other (2009 & 1999, respectively) and present contemporary music at its finest.

I heard about Eric Funk and his epic work only recently. I got excited for the piece immediately. The violin is used to emulate different instruments of the orchestra, all the while the solo line is executed concurrently. Timpani, trumpets, clarinets and others are called as the violin weaves its solo melodies in and out of the quasi-orchestra. It’s an exciting work and one which I hope to be performing for some time to come.

The late Finnish composer, Pehr Henrik Nordgren, is a composer I really admire. His music is not unlike Sibelius in how it conjures up such imagery of nature, emptiness, and the cold & bleak arctic tundra. I got a taste of this prolific composer’s music while on tour with a small chamber ensemble called Arcos in 2010. We presented his work for audiences all across greater Europe, and although Bartók, Shostakovich and Barber were on the program, the Nordgren work always stole the show. We are blessed to have been left so many works by him and I will certainly do my best to champion Nordgren’s great contribution to classical music.

I am recording these two works in December at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and mastering them around the holidays; you can expect to be hearing them soon enough.