Guest Music psa

I haven't heard back from all my music psa surveys yet, but I have enough responses to get me through the next couple weeks. ;) This week I'm posting a favorite piece of my fellow music major and good friend Angela. Angela is a violinist and quite a good one at that. she's gone on to get her master's in music. I asked her to recommend a favorite violin concerto or solo, since my knowledge is more of piano than it is of violin. Angela said that the piece my question brought to mind was the vioin concerto in d minor by sibelius. This is a really enjoyable performance by Gil shaham (one of the few current performers that I actually know about) that I found on YouTube. 


I'm a little sad that we never really studied sibelius in Music History as he seems like a composer I should know. All I know is that he was Finnish, he composed in the late 1800s, and you can definitely hear some of the nationalistic or folk elements composers were playing with then in this piece. 


I've posted the third movement, mostly because the first movement is too long for one video clip. But the whole piece is really worth listening to. I can remember Dr. strauch getting on his soapbox about what makes classical music important and unique, and one of the things was how many different emotions it can span in a single piece. You don't really find that in pop music or even in jazz. This piece does a good job of demonstrating that, it's very fun but sensitive somehow at the same time. It's also impressive in how technically demanding it is, but not showy. I think my favorite part is the syncopated rhythm that first shows up around 1:40 (syncopation is a major element of swing music) and also the "whistle" effect the violin makes around 4:45. I also like how excited the violinist is about playing the piece. Watch his face at the beginning. "Ready? Okay, go!"