Jan Radzynski - Personal Verses - Mvt 2

Personal Verses for violin and piano composed in 1999 for pianist Golda Vainberg and Lithuanian violinist Raimundas Katilius, is comprised of three contrasting movements: a dance-like Vivo e risoluto, a slow Andante, and a relentless, frenzied Con moto.

The first movement Vivo e risoluto features three fast dances: mazurka, waltz, and Israeli hora. A Chopinesque mazurka opens the movement in a decisive, straight forward fashion, but it acquires a melismatc quality with increased ornamentation. The mazurka morphs into a brief waltz, which serves as transition to a spirited hora. The hora recalls the dance of Jewish pioneers in Eretz Yisrael. The movement concludes with the return of mazurka.

The middle Andante movement of Personal Verses opens with lyrical melody, gradually transformed into a foreboding march. The middle secion of Andante includes an impassioned violin cadenza. The movement then returns to the opening melody, this time dramatically interrupted by a quotation from the famous Zog Nisht Keyn Mol (Don't Ever Say This Is the Last Road), a defiant song from the Vilnius Ghetto that became the anthem of Jewish partisans during World War II.

Personal Verses concludes with a forward-driving, perpetual motion Con moto. If the first two movements look back at the yellowed photographs in the family album, the obsessive Con moto belongs to the present, here and now. Certainly, this movement does not attempt to reconcile with the past. A dialogue with the past becomes impossible, given its horrific history. But the lessons of history seem to have never really been learned. What remains is obsession, madness, and a cry of despair.

-Jan Radzynski

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