Lera Auerbach and Enrico Chapela: UK premieres of violin concertos
Scottish orchestras present the UK premieres this month of Lera Auerbach’s Violin Concerto No.1 and Enrico Chapela’s electric violin concerto Antiphaser. Philippe Quint is soloist with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee and Chloë Hanslip joins the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Glasgow.
Two major contemporary violin concertos receive their UK premieres this month performed by Scottish orchestras. Philippe Quint is soloist in Lera Auerbach’s Violin Concerto No.1 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee conducted by Bassem Akiki (30 October – 1 November). This follows Quint’s performances as soloist in the work’s premiere in the USA and on a recent Pentatone recording with the RSNO. Chloë Hanslip is electric violinist in Enrico Chapela’s Antiphaser, performed in Glasgow with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Mihhail Gerts (29 October).
Russian-born composer Lera Auerbach has featured prominently in the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s recent seasons, with Icarus touring in Scotland and to the Salzburg Festival in 2023, with her appearing in dual roles as pianist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20 and as conductor in her own Eterniday alongside music by Haydn in 2024, and with three performances of Symphony No.1 ‘Chimera’ conducted by Thomas Søndergård in 2025. The orchestra recorded her Violin Concerto No.1 for Pentatone in 2025 conducted by Andrew Litton.
Cast in four movements, Auerbach’s multilayered concerto reflects the distortion of memory by future experience. The work opens with the moment of mortality, depicted by an overwhelming orchestral tutti described by the composer as ‘death-clusters’ from which the voice of the solo violin emerges attempting to rebuild memories of life. The second movement is a grotesque scherzo full of black humour and the third an Adagio religioso in the form of a tragic passacaglia. The final fourth movement, the longest in the concerto, is a fiery dance of death in the form of a rondo constantly returning to a chord progression from which the soloist cannot escape.
The three Scottish performances are followed by a major Auerbach focus at the Konzerthaus in Dortmund including her latest string quartet, No.11, the German premiere of Symphony No.4 ‘Arctica’ (6 November) and her visionary work for choir and saxophone quartet, 72 Angels (5-7 November). Auerbach is currently composing a new orchestral concert opener for Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony (1 April).
> Listen to Violin Concerto No.1
> More information on Violin Concerto No.1
> Visit the Royal Scottish National Orchestra website
Antiphaser by the Mexican composer Enrico Chapela is an electric violin concerto which offers a musical reflection on the waxing and waning of moon and earth, with the phases of each celestial body related and complementary – a modern take on the ‘music of the spheres’. The work was commissioned by BBC Radio 3, partnering the Seattle Symphony, and the planned premiere in Glasgow was postponed twice due to successive waves of the COVID pandemic. The concerto has been performed to date by the Seattle Symphony under Andrew Litton and by the Orquesta Urtext in Mexico City, with respective soloists Pekka Kuusisto and Dirén Checa.
Reviewing the premiere in Seattle, Classical Voice North America described how “Chapela fuses the propulsive energy of rock with the kind of perpetual-motion dynamism that animates the fast movements of a Baroque concerto… His treatment of the orchestra worked especially well with the violin’s amplified tonal colors: tendrilled woodwind figures and glissando harmonies from the strings provided a mysterious aura, while snarling brass accents established an atmosphere of combined fear and excitement."
Chapela employs phasing effects and delay loops both as literal tone generators and as a metaphor for the cosmic mechanics. The phasing is heard when material is split and one copy is progressively delayed reaching the ‘antiphase’ of the title at the cyclic midpoint of 180 degrees, the moment astronomically when the eclipse is observed. The delay loops are applied live to the solo violin line, with the soloist creating a dialogue playing against the instrument’s own looped material.
Recent orchestral works by Chapela include Chinampa y Trajinera for the Mannheim National Theatre Orchestra, Spinphony for the Dusseldorf Symphony, and a new cello concertino Alebrije for Zuill Beiley. The composer is currently completing a new saxophone concerto, Saxponential, for Asya Fateyeva and the Duisburg Philharmonic for premiere on 17 December.
> Watch a video of Antiphaser
> More information on Antiphaser
> Visit the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra website
Photos: Cezary Rucki, Bernd Uhlig