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Violinist Jennifer Koh and Pianist Shai Wosner Debut Vijay Iyer's Bridgetower Fantasy

Apr. 01, 2015

Violinist Jennifer Koh and Pianist Shai Wosner Debut Vijay Iyer's <em>Bridgetower Fantasy</em>

Violinist Jennifer Koh joins pianist Shai Wosner for the world premiere of Vijay Iyer’s Bridgetower Fantasy on April 22 at the University of California Santa Barbara as part of a program titled “Bridge to Beethoven: Finding Identity Through Music.”

The piece takes its name after the famed 18th-century virtuoso concert violinist George Bridgetower. Beethoven’s Sonata No. 9 in A Major, op. 47, known otherwise as the “Kreutzer” sonata, was not actually premiered or even performed by the French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer: instead, Beethoven enlisted Bridgetower to perform the premiere with him in the spring of 1803. Though the performance was by all accounts a success, their spirited collaboration was short lived, as Iyer describes in his program note: “While celebrating afterwards, the two quarreled about what Beethoven construed as Bridgetower’s insult of a female acquaintance; the composer then revoked the original dedication, adding Kreutzer’s name instead.”

For the occasion of Jennifer Koh’s “Bridge to Beethoven” series, Iyer composed a piece that he describes as “a collection of imaginings about George Bridgetower.” The work was written to “feature the embodied expertise and expressivity” of Koh and Wosner, while assuming “an episodic character, assembled from contrasting fragments.” Bridgetower Fantasy will be bookended by Beethoven’s Sonata No. 1 in D Major to open the program and, quite appropriately, his “Kreutzer” Sonata to close.

For more information on Vijay Iyer, visit schott-music.com.

Visit artsandlectures.sa.ucsb.edu for tickets and concert information.

Vijay Iyer
Bridgetower Fantasy (2015)
for violin and piano
15’

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