Michael Torke’s Violin Concerto

European composers are famous for turning folk music into concert-hall music. Dvorak, for instance, based his ninth symphony and Slavonic Dance cycle on Czech folk songs. Tchaikovsky’s second symphony and many of his ballet melodies are permutations of Russian folk songs. And Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances, children’s piano booklets, and second violin concerto are all based on Hungarian and Romanian folk songs. But the Americans are not too far behind. Despite having a few hundred less years of folk music to glean from, many American composers have adapted American folk music for the concert stage. The best example is Aaron Copland, who wrote entire symphonies and ballets based on Shaker hymns and Appalachian fiddle tunes. But others have followed in his footsteps, including Las Vegas-based composer Michael Torke, whose recent recording of his bluegrass-inspired violin concerto Sky with Kentucky-born violinist Tessa Lark presents the latest of his efforts at bringing folk music into the concert hall. 

Torke has spent the better part of three decades composing music for the top ensembles in the world. He has been referred to as a post-minimalist composer. (The term “minimalism” refers to a school of composition that emerged in the 1960s—in reaction to the complex serialism of the Second Viennese school (early 1900s)—and featured limited tonal ranges, repetitive patterns, and static, consonant harmonies). Yet I’ve always thought of Torke has a pure minimalist. Most of his previous albums have featured the same punchy repetitiveness that one finds in the music of Steve Reich and other prominent minimalists. With that said, I believe Sky’s pairing of minimalist rhythms with traditional classical structures comes closer to being post-minimalist than any of Torke’s previous works.

Why “Sky?” Well, as Torke says, “I felt an openness when writing this piece, a renewed freshness to putting notes together.” Openness and freshness are fitting terms, I think. One can hear strains of an almost Copland-esque expansiveness, a frontier-like youthfulness, the sort of fresh and jaunty sound that has characterized American classical music since at least the mid-20^th century. This is not to say that the bluegrass aspect of the concerto isn’t immediately apparent. On the contrary, every note from the opening to the final flourish seems as if it could have been dropped straight from an Appalachian mountain-top onto Torke’s score.

In the first movement, Torke accomplishes this effect through wonderfully inventive syncopation dispersed between the solo violin, pizzicato strings, and tambourine. By introducing a new flavor of syncopation each time the initial melody returns, Torke manages to capture the cyclical nature of fiddle music without being monotonous. The same could be said of the third and final movement, which brings back many of the first movement’s rhythmic devices in a triplet-centered format. The only difference is the foot-stomping rampage to the finish.

The high point of the concerto, however, is the second movement. Aptly titled Wistful, this movement presents the listener with three different Irish reels, beginning with a plaintive lament played by the violin soloist. I found this theme to be the most emotionally powerful moment in the concerto. Second is a quick, light-footed reel that suggests a country wedding or harvest festival, and last is a triplet-centered dance tune. Torke has the solo violin play the triplet tune in unison with the flutes, a brilliant move that heightens the Irishness of the music and intensifies the whirling energy of the dance. Then the movement returns to the lilting first theme, and our tour of Ireland is complete.

Minimalist or otherwise, Sky is a wonderful success. At once regional and national, the concerto brings together the best of bluegrass, fiddle, and folk music and offers them to us in a marvelously inventive, constantly entertaining manner. Speaking as a violinist, my only regret after listening to Sky is that I haven’t had the chance to play it. 

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