Valse Brillante in C major for Violin and Orchestra

This is a slightly revised version of my most recent concertante piece.  It is a pure virtuosic showpiece for violin and orchestra in the light romantic style trying to draw inspiration from other violinist-composers like Sarasate and Wieniawski.  It is in simple A-B-A form ending with a short cadenza-like coda.

Do you by chance play violin? If you could play this, congrats, because that's a very difficult and awkward solo violin part to play... the consecutive double stops and open string/positioned stops make it quite hard. I couldn't play this, but maybe that's because I'm not the most adept at it.

It certainly sounds nice, but the solo part writing might need some tweaking. 

This is a nice waltz, appropriate for any ball, I would think. It has a fine sense of direction and proportion throughout its length. A Pleasure! Have you seen this?

Very cool. The orchestra and solo is balanced nicely, it has a nice flow and you do a good job of developing and then moving on from musical ideas. As Monarcheon mentioned, it might a little on the awkward side playing wise, particularly where you have the fast slurred double-stops. Also, I feel like there may be a few too many false endings, where the piece comes to a halt and then moves on a with new idea as if it was another movement. I'm fine with there being a few, but it feels like there are too many to the point the piece feels kind of start-stop-start-stop-etc. Overall, it's very good and has a grand finish.

On 8/11/2016 at 4:00 PM, Monarcheon said:

Do you by chance play violin? If you could play this, congrats, because that's a very difficult and awkward solo violin part to play... the consecutive double stops and open string/positioned stops make it quite hard. I couldn't play this, but maybe that's because I'm not the most adept at it.

It certainly sounds nice, but the solo part writing might need some tweaking. 

 

 

Thanks for listening!  Believe it or not, this is a tweaked version, an earlier version was far more excessive with the double stops.  I am a mediocre violinist but that often leads me to fall into the trap of knowing what is theoretically playable but not necessarily what is practical. 

21 hours ago, Ken320 said:

This is a nice waltz, appropriate for any ball, I would think. It has a fine sense of direction and proportion throughout its length. A Pleasure! Have you seen this?

 

 

Thanks Ken both for listening and the nice link to the Strauss video!

9 hours ago, SebastianViola said:

Very cool. The orchestra and solo is balanced nicely, it has a nice flow and you do a good job of developing and then moving on from musical ideas. As Monarcheon mentioned, it might a little on the awkward side playing wise, particularly where you have the fast slurred double-stops. Also, I feel like there may be a few too many false endings, where the piece comes to a halt and then moves on a with new idea as if it was another movement. I'm fine with there being a few, but it feels like there are too many to the point the piece feels kind of start-stop-start-stop-etc. Overall, it's very good and has a grand finish.

 

Yeah, I agree that the solo part is probably not practical in its current form.  Also what you (and others have also observed) about the abrupt end of the first section before the second section is well taken.  It evolved that way since I wrote each section separately then tried to connect them together and I never came up with a convincing way (in my mind) so I just left it as is.  Thanks for listening.