"Reynolds –
works for violin, written for and dedicated to Arditti 1992-2015"
Mark Menzies in conversation with Roger Reynolds and Irvine Arditti
As we were completing the editing of Aspiration, a question arose: how to approach creating the liner notes for this collected release of Reynolds’s works for violin.
Earlier, I had been asked to assist in the producing of the Kokoro recording. During that process I found myself suddenly in the middle of the palpable collaborative energy between Roger and Irvine – an extraordinary connection going back decades – and it immediately occurred to me that it was this, above all, that the liner notes had to document.
Their essential commitment to a refin(d)ing energy, evoked what I have always imagined an “other” greatly consequential composer-violinist collaboration to have been: Joachim and Brahms. I don’t assert an exact parallel, or indeed an heroic replay, of a past model. Rather, I imagined that Brahms’s notion of what the violin could express was manifestly suggested by Joachim’s (virtuoso) ability and his greatly informed musical resourcefulness and empathy. Their interaction lasted decades, with the music that came out of it marking an evolution of possibility. This also sums up Roger and Irvine’s collaboration perfectly.
It is certain that Brahms was inspired by the breadth of Joachim’s performing repertoire choices – everything from the then almost completely unknown solo Bach repertoire, to string quartets, to the “never-performed“ Beethoven concerto. Certainly I see an equivalent energy transfer in the case of Roger and Irvine.
Whatever: these preliminaries are but whimsy to prepare for Irvine and Roger saying how it goes in their own words. It was not without trepidation that I prepared questions for these two to get the conversation rolling: one fears, in the effort to be “probing“, that one does nothing more than “prodding“, and in the effort to be deferential, nothing but irritating. No doubt with much patience towards my preliminary literary skills, I find the resulting answers moving: mostly because it is so rare to read about people’s motivations in collaborative art-making, particularly in view of the great success that both these wondrous artists enjoy.
– Mark Menzies, Christchurch, New Zealand
from the liner notes
