Irish Baroque Orchestra premiere Seán Doherty work

Programme includes:

Seán Doherty Sonata for baroque violin (premiere)
Corelli Sonata with embellishments by Dubourg
Francesco Geminiani Cello Sonata

This programme features two pieces that I wrote for the Baroque violinist Claire Duff. The first, ‘Divisions’, took inspiration from the improvisatory Baroque genre of ‘divisions on a ground’. It follows a single duration, the semibreve, through all its subdivisions: crotchet, quaver, semiquaver, etc. to the semidemiquaver. Alongside this, a single interval, the semitone, is developed into the passus duriusculus, a Baroque signal of lamentation. My 'Sonata for Baroque Violin’, which has its premiere in this concert, also plays with Baroque genres and cliché. In this piece, however, the divisions run along the fingerboard—the resonance of the lower two strings is pitted against the brilliance of the higher two strings in a continuous stream of virtuosic bariolage. Both pieces were inspired by the long line of violin virtuosi that, beginning in the Baroque era, is continued today by Claire Duff. 

- Seán Doherty