I composed the Six Pieces for Solo Violin from fall 2020 to summer 2023 for the violinist Teresa Allgaier. The project began with the observation that the violin has remained pretty much the same for hundreds of years and has developed relatively little in that time. The great important violin cycles, such as those by Biber, Bach, Paganini, Ysaÿe or Sciarrino, were therefore not so much a reaction to the development of the instrument itself - in contrast to the piano, for example - but to what kind of music could be written on it within the capabilities of the players. So the repertoire developed based on the tastes of a particular era and who was writing for whom, rather than for reasons of technical progress.
When I teamed up with Teresa to work on music for violin, we asked ourselves what our contribution as two women of the 21st century could be in this context.
I approached the composition process very intuitively. What inspired me a lot was the act of playing the violin itself, just as the movements of a dancer can inspire the music for a ballet. That's why I chose the titles mainly from the world of violin playing. This ultimately seemed to me to be the most meaningful and even poetic, even if the composition process in most cases was not inspired from these mostly technical terms. When working on the pieces, it was particularly important to me that they would not only work on a classical concert stage, but would also be enjoyable on a full length album. It was therefore a wonderful opportunity to work with our label Squama Recordings from the outset, whose open-minded environment provided such a refreshing source of inspiration and a beautiful context for this music.