Meyer: Violin Concerto

Squeezing in yet another American violin concerto. This one dates from 1999 and was written by Edgar Meyer for Hilary Hahn. Meyer (born 1960) is best known as a bassist who likes to straddle different genres. The piece is not in the same league as the other American concertos I listened to in the past few days. It's contemporary music at its most approachable: tonal through and through, hardly any counterpoint. There is absolutely nothing to discourage the least adventurous of music lovers. Its pastoral-elegiac bent and amiable folksiness inevitably puts it in the slipstream of Copland's Appalachian Spring. And that is maybe not so surprising given that Meyer has grown up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, just a few tens of miles west from Knoxville and the Blue Smoky Mountains. (Incidentally, Oak Ridge is also known as 'the secret city' or 'atomic city' as it was an early production site for the Manhattan project, which casts a somewhat awkward light on this nostalgic bliss). Anyway, the work is eminently listenable. I wouldn't think of putting the Rochberg concerto on whilst savouring my Sunday morning croissant, but the Meyer piece would likely be welcome to extend and deepen the mood of quiet reflection. The work falls into two parts (again!): a first movement that is built around an alternation between a brooding ostinato motif in the strings and a series of lyrically-introspective interludes. The long second part starts with a dawn-like section, with murmuring clarinets, bassoons and strings and a fragile violin line on top. About halfway the music shifts into a more celebratory gear. Momentarily it returns to the reflective mood of the movement's start. The final section is given to a jubilant accelerando. Hahn clearly believes in the piece and gives it her best. I am sure a lesser soloist would kill it.