Rabia plays Glass’s Partita for Solo Violin
On October 28, Nova Linea Musica marks Philip Glass’s 90th birthday at Guarneri Hall. Rabia plays one work on the program: the Partita for Solo Violin.
It is the only piece on the evening she plays alone, and the only one with no one else to lean on: no piano, no ensemble, nothing between the violin and the room. Glass’s writing for unaccompanied violin asks for patience and exactness in equal measure, and it rewards a player who can hold a line steady while the patterns underneath it shift.
The Partita is also where Glass meets the composer at the heart of Rabia’s playing. Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin sit at the center of her repertoire, from the Adagio of the First Sonata she played in Braunschweig this summer to the Chaconne of the Second Partita. Glass’s title is no accident: he borrows Bach’s name for a suite of dances, and two of his seven movements are chaconnes, built on the same principle of a short pattern repeated and transformed that drives the great finale of Bach’s Second Partita. For a violinist raised on Bach, the Partita reads less as a leap across three centuries than as a continuation, with the same long arcs spun from simple figures and the same demand that one instrument carry everything on its own.
“I heard Tim Fain perform it; it was written for him. His interpretation stood out and drew me to the work. I have also been inspired by Glass’s Violin Concerto No. 1.” —Rabia Brooke
The rest of the evening belongs to her collaborators. Flutist Demarre McGill, violinist Desirée Ruhstrat, and cellist Wendy Sutter perform Glass’s chamber music for small forces, along with the world premiere of Through Philip and Lou, a new work by Alex Weston commissioned by Nova Linea Musica for the celebration.
Update: At the October 28 concert, Rabia performed three movements from the Partita. Reviewing the evening for Third Coast Review, Zach Carstensen wrote that the work showcased the violin’s lyrical voice while giving Brooke “room to display its more athletic side.”