Solenn Séguillon – August 22, 2014

Shahab Paranj Elegy for solo violin, World PremiereArvo Pärt Fratres for violin and pianoFrédéric Chopin, trans. Nathan Milstein Nocturne No. 20 in C-sharp minorLudwig van Beethoven Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, Op. 47, ‘KreutzerParisian violinist Solenn Séguillon performs nationally and internationally as a soloist and chamber music musician. She has appeared as soloist with several symphony orchestras including the American Philharmonic, the Knox-Galesburg Symphony, the Southeast Iowa Symphony and the Bear Valley Music Festival Orchestra. Peter Jaret of Classical Sonoma wrote of Solenns performance of Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending, “Séguillon held the audience rapt as she unfurled the lush, rising lines of the lark’s theme with exquisite grace and power.” A member of Old First Concerts artists-in-residence Aleron Trio, she was awarded the 2014 Berkeley Piano Club Emerging Artist Award and has been invited to attend the Chamber Music Residency at the Banff Centre this summer as well as the Britten–Pears Young Artist Programme at Aldeburgh Music in England, where she will work with the renowned Pavel Haas Quartet and Klára Würtz. For this performance of works by Arvo Pärt, Frédéric Chopin, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Shahab Paranj, she is joined by the multi-talented artist Anne Rainwater, known for her compelling interpretations of music from Bach to Zorn. The program features the World Premiere of Shahab Paranj’s Elegy a short piece for unaccompanied violin based on a Persian classical melody, Sozo godaz Gusheh, derived from an Isfehan dastgah (related group of melodies). The Persian Radif codex contains several different dastgahs, which are distinguished from each other by the intervallic “weights” of the different notes in the scale. Any given dastgah may contain approximately from 10 to 30 goushehs (melodies). The Elegy contains more variation and uses slightly different pitch-sets than one finds in a strict Sozo Godaz. As with much of Paranj’s music, the piece seeks to combine disparate elements of Persian classical through-composition within the context of Western formal canon. In addition, the piece employs extended pizzicato techniques, designed to emulate the touch of the Persian setar, the foremost instrument used to explore melodic forms in the Radif.