By Scott Slapin: Happy New Year!
2020 is the 300th anniversary of the completion of J.S. Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Violin and Suites for Cello (BWV 1001-1012). And in my biased opinion, the viola is the perfect one instrument to perform all of these works!
So this past Saturday, I took my Iizuka viola to one of our local bars in western Mass., The Taproom in Hadley, and at 3 pm started with the first violin sonata and didn't stop until close to 7pm at the end of the sixth suite. (In the interest of not developing tendinitis, I did skip many of the repeats.)
Although I had performed both sets in my early twenties, I had never done them together--- and certainly not in a bar. So I had no idea really what to expect. I think the concert was a success (=the audience enjoyed it), and I think that it was a greater success in a bar than it would have been in a traditional concert hall, which I explain in the video.
Enough audience members sent in footage from their cell phones, and my wife got some video from her Zoom camera, that she was able to put together this overview from the whole concert, together with some commentary about the music and event.
An artist happened to be present for the concert... and he drew a picture of me playing, which we're posting as the picture for this blog post. His name is Alexey Neyman, and this is his website.
I really enjoyed working on all of this Bach, and I hope you will enjoy the YouTube video we put together.
Happy 2020!
You might also like:
↧
