In 2012 at the Library of Congress, I had the pleasure to premiere “Kreisleriana”, a work by Harold Meltzer commissioned by the Library’s McKim Fund, established by Leonora Jackson McKim to support new compositions for violin and piano. The concert program was a tribute to Fritz Kreisler, hence the piece’s title. Robert Schumann’s “Kreisleriana” was another inspiration. Harold’s “Kreisleriana” had been commissioned immediately following a Library of Congress concert I played in 2008 with his group Sequitur. On that concert, I was part of the Duo for violin and piano by Elliott Carter.

This season, I was honored the Library reached out to me with an invitation to perform there again. Amid discussing various programming ideas, we were given the opportunity to use Jackson McKim’s Stradivarius violin. With its current owner’s support of an event honoring her remarkable legacy, we decided on a concert of old and new chamber music. This included the Meltzer “Kreisleriana” in its revised 2014 version. The rest of the Feb 21 program:  Robert Schumann’s Op. 47 quartet; the seldom-played “Intermezzo” by Kodály; “Dhipli zyia”, a folksy early work by Xenakis; the Finale from Beethoven’s Op. 3 trio (the LoC owns the manuscript); and “Sāniyā” by Iranian composer Aida Shirazi, in its US premiere.

The McKim violin (which was also owned by Joseph Joachim) was brought to DC the night before. I played the whole concert on it except for the Shirazi piece, which involves detuning and which I played on my own violin. (I’m fortunate to play a wonderful Guadagnini.) It was a privilege to play Leonora Jackson McKim’s Strad. Laurie Niles wrote a very interesting essay on it for Violinist.com.

My very warm thanks to the Library. Playing in beautiful Coolidge hall, and in this amazing repository of the recorded history and cultural legacy of the USA, is hugely meaningful to me  – as an artist and an immigrant, and as someone who’s played a lot of music by American composers and done research on the music of this country.