Music Worcester Presents: Vijay Gupta, Violinist in Recital

“When the Violin, the title of a poem by the Sufi mystic Hafiz on the power of forgiveness and new identities, will present works by JS Bach and Reena Esmail in collaboration with dance artist and choreographer Yamini Kalluri. Opening with Bach’s 2nd Partita in D minor with its concluding “Ciacona” – considered an Everest for violinists – the program will present a new choreography of the preceding baroque dance movements of Bach’s Partita. Kalluri is trained as a classical Indian dancer as well as in the Martha Graham school of avant-garde ballet.

Following the D minor Partita comes Esmail’s When The Violin, originally written for choir and cello, and a companion work to the 16th century Spanish composer Victoria’s O Vos Omnes. Esmail writes: “The text of O Vos Omnes is asking, simply, to be seen in a moment of sorrow — to be beheld through suffering and darkness. And Hafiz’s text responds in such a beautiful way — it moves through that darkness and begins to let those very first slivers of light in.”

Concluding the program is Bach’s equally monumental 3rd Sonata in C major, which is believed to have been written for the occasion of Pentecost. The Sonata’s 2nd movement, a revolutionary 3- part fugue written for a four-stringed violin, sets a Lutheran hymn “Komm, Heiliger Geist” (Come, Holy Spirit), and famously reverses the hymn subject in a feat of contrapuntal mastery.”

–Vijay Gupta, Music Worcester Artist-In-Residence 2023