Weekly Lists #39: Favorite Pieces for the Violin

Every Wednesday, I post a list of 5 random things. This week: 5 of my favorite pieces for the violin!

Now, first I might need to explain: I’ve played the violin since I was 9 – that makes 14 years, and although I definitely don’t play as often anymore as I did while in high school (because in Belgium, music classes are given in a school-system very similar to the ordinary one, and as such you “graduate” your instrument aged 18), I do still love to play.
It’s probably become one of my favourite ways to relieve some stress – especially necessary with exams having just begun! – and these are 5 of the pieces I always turn back to, because I love them, I love playing them – and they’re stuck in my fingers!

1. Bach: BWV1043: Double Violin Concerto in D minor, 2nd movement

I actually didn’t even play this one for my own exam – it’s a duo, obviously, and I was just asked to play the second violin. It’s actually an incredibly amazing piece to play, relatively simple as far as the notes are concerned, but making sure that you’re playing well together does tend to make it rather interesting 🙂

2.  Israeli Concerti, George Perlman

You know, like, that feeling you get when everything’s temporarily not cooperating, and whatever you’re supposed to be doing (in my case: usually studying or writing a paper) just won’t do the thing?
That’s the type of frustration that makes me get out my violin and play this one – albeit a bit more aggressively than it’s performed here, I’ll admit, but hey: it works!
Once I’ve gone through this one twice or thrice, I’m all better and ready to get going again!

3. Polish Dance, Edmund Severn

4. Opus 12, Ferdinand Küchler

I played this one for my final exam in my 3th or 4th year of violin and I just remember loving it so much – because that was, like, one of the first real music pieces I ever got to play, you know? And to this day, I just find it such a relaxing song to play – definitely a recommendation for any beginner to intermediate-players out there!

And then, of course, there’s the classics:

5a. Canon in D, Pachelbel

and:

5b. Schindler’s List

Yeah… I went there!

I actually have two more pieces that I really love to play, but for some reason I can’t find a decent recording of Theo Van Doren’s Concerto Romantique anywhere, and I can’t remember the name of the Vivaldi piece I play so often – I even googled pieces of the sheet music, and I still got nothing? Suffice it to say: there’s more where that came from 🙂

Anyways, so there you have it, 5 of my favourite pieces to ever have played on the violin – did you know all of them? Or even any, if you’re not counting the two “cliches”? I have to admit, before I had to play them, I mostly didn’t – just another reason to love playing the violin, then: it helped me discover new pieces!

-Saar