Unaccompanied

Bach’s Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 is built on a repeating harmonic pattern, but what emerges feels like a symphony for the violinist alone – layers of texture and harmony that shouldn’t be possible from a single instrument. Brahms once wrote that if he’d imagined creating the piece, “the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.” Some believe the Chaconne is a hidden memorial for Bach’s first wife, who died unexpectedly in 1720 – coded references to death and chorale fragments woven into the music’s mysteries.

That sense of a complete world contained in one voice runs through this program of unaccompanied works for solo instruments. The broadcast features Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise, originally written as a song without words and transcribed for nearly every instrument imaginable, and Bach’s Chaconne arranged for solo guitar. Eugène Ysaÿe’s Ballade for solo violin explores longing and virtuosity in a single movement, while Felix Godefroid’s King David’s Triumphal March evokes a grand opera for harp alone. Valerie Coleman’s Danza de la Mariposa moves through South America with the color and rhythm of butterflies, and Roger Zare’s Appalachian Triptych climbs from the clarinet’s lowest register to its highest, painting a vast mountain landscape in sound.