During this past month, I made videos of the Six Caprices for violin by Salvatore Sciarrino. I’m very proud of them and I hope you’ll listen and watch. They’re very beautiful music.

I first played several of these back when I was starting to play a lot of contemporary music. The Capricci mean a lot to me and I feel strongly about the expression and sound world of this music. There’s a lot I can say and explain but I’m not in the mood to write it down, so for now, I’ll post the interview I did at the West Cork Festival in Ireland after I’d performed the six of them. While they certainly draw somewhat from Paganini’s famous caprices, I feel Sciarrino’s caprices have a feeling of wonder, mystery, and sparkle that comes from the combination of notes, noise, and silence-as-environment. The effect overall is more Mendelssohnian than noisy, and silence is the essential ocean-like world that sounds emerge from and sink back into.

My interpretation of Sciarrino’s harmonics is that some produce noise and some are harmonics that will sound as pitches, which give the music a radiance and elements of melody rather than a pile of gestures.

Youtube playlist of all six Caprices is here.