First of all, I have to say, I originally found this piece a bit irritating to listen to and enjoy. I thought that it was just because of the music piece itself and that of my own subjective taste of music that triggered this irritating response. However, I was still a bit skeptical of that, so to confirm, I went on Youtube and searched for another violinist who played this same piece, and to my surprise, that second violinist’s portrayal of this piece was so much different than this violinist. And of course, I mean no offense to this particular violinist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do believe that her violin skills are definitely subpar, to say the least, in comparison to the second violinist that I’ve heard. I do understand that the sound violin produces can vastly differ based on its quality and its price tag. But I do also want to note that I don’t believe that a cheaper violin will make an otherwise tolerable fast-tempo piece not tolerable at all. So it really goes to prove a violinist’s true skills. One more thing that I want to mention though is that last Friday I went to a violinist concert for the upcoming concert report, but after listening to it, it was really a disappointment to me. The first piece and the last piece were nice, but the pieces in between are similarly irritating for me in comparison to this one. For that concert though, I do believe that it’s more of a conductor’s issue, her understanding of pieces she’s conducting wasn’t deep enough to reflect the original composer’s intentions. So the flutes came out really irritating and it was a countermelody to the first melody violinists. Now, going back to this particular assignment, I believe this piece was trying to convey a message or set a scenery of a battleground. At first, it was really intense with the staccato accented melodies and minor tonality. It created a suspenseful scenery of something dangerous that was about to happen, likely a war. Then, in a dramatic shift in theme, the tonality becomes a major scale, while the tempo was still relatively fast, pitches are a lot softer than the previous theme, thereby creating a scenery of a false alarm until it was again, shifted back to a minor scale to recreate the suspense. By now, the scenery becomes a bit clever because it gives the audience the scenery similar to that of Aesop’s fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” Is there really an imminent danger or is this suspenseful melody another false alarm? It wasn’t until themes one and two repeated twice, the harmonious melodies appeared and comes around and finally settled down to indicate a permanent peace to the “town.”

Original Violinist – Vilde Frang

Second Violinist – Hilary Hahn