Music for Violin Solo

Both during my studies and my years as an active violinist, works for violin solo have been of central importance to me. When I studied with Louis Persinger in New York, the focus was on the solo repertoire. He was one of the most prominent violinists and pedagogues of his time, and the works by Eugène Ysaÿe (1858–1931) and Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) on this album, I got to know through him. 

    I performed Johan Helmich Roman’s (1694–1758) B Minor Assaggio for the first time in 1979 in Haraldsmåla outside the city Kalmar when a memorial plaque for him was to be unveiled. In this village he lived the last years of his life.

    I discovered the sonata for violin solo by Moses Pergament mostly by chance when I was browsing among the music shelves of a music store in Stockholm in the late 1960s. My curiosity was aroused by the fastidious, concentrated expression. Even though the Chaconne is more known, the sonata was the one I found.

    I have returned to these works later in life. I performed the first movement of Prokofiev’s Sonata for violin solo at my debut concert at the Thiel Gallery in Stockholm in 1968. Hans Enflo