Description

The Red Violin Caprices, lasting approximately 10 minutes, are adaptations of John Corigliano's score for The Red Violin, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1999. These Caprices were specifically composed for Joshua Bell. They feature a spacious, troubadour-inspired theme that is varied both linearly and stylistically. The variations draw upon Baroque, Gypsy, and arch-Romantic styles, exploring the same musical elements—a dark seven-chord chaconne and the principal theme—from various auditory perspectives. The Caprices were designed to mirror the film's narrative, which follows Bussotti, a fictional 18th-century violin maker, as he creates his finest violin for his unborn son. Following the tragic loss of his wife and child, Bussotti, in a poignant yet grim act, incorporates the blood of his beloved into the violin's varnish. Their destinies intertwined, the violin journeys through three centuries, traversing cities such as Vienna, London, Shanghai, and Montreal, and passing through the hands of a doomed child prodigy, a flamboyant virtuoso, a haunted Maoist commissar, and ultimately a determined Canadian expert, whose aspirations for the violin bring the story full circle, reuniting parent and child through art.