September brings Emmanuel Coppey and Bach

When you hear music of the spheres

Last night I heard the outstanding young French violinist Emmanuel Coppey play three unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas by Bach. The concert was sponsored by the Washington Bach Consort and took pace in a church in downtown DC.

Concert venue, the First Congregational United Church of Christ.

Emmanuel Coppey is in his mid twenties, and plays a violin made by the legendary Italian luthier Guarneri del Gesù.

A Guarneri violin.

Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor was on the program; its last movement, the Chaconne, among the greatest pieces ever written. The Chaconne carries great emotional heft for me, and has been in my heart since my teenage years.

Thanks to the YouTube gods, you can hear Coppey play the whole Partita at this link. (If you want to hear only the Chaconne, start about 16 minutes in.)

Coppey last night.

I haven’t heard a purer, more bell-like rendition than Coppey’s performance. The sound is in the spectacular tone of Coppey’s violin, but also in Coppey’s daunting right arm technique. You cannot hear his bow change direction. Such command of the bow is the gold standard, and is rare. A continuous bow emulates the human voice, as in, listening to singing without hearing the intake of breath.

A second aspect of Coppey’s astonishing technique is his mastery of the top half of the bow, which is lighter, and harder to control. Coppey brings not only exquisite precision, but also great power to his fortes in this upper half.

Not coincidentally, this Partita’s D Minor key (one flat, B♭) is associated with iconic classical pieces because of its emotional breadth and depth—sobriety, grief, revelation—I don’t have the vocabulary to describe it. Consider the Mozart Requiem in D Minor, a keystone of my novel THREE MUSES (I used that score for the choreographed ballet called Three Muses).

Bach’s unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas appear in my next novel, DUET FOR ONE, a musical love story, due out May 6, 2025. Here is the violinist protagonist, Adam Pearl, playing Bach in his studio apartment a few hours after burying his mother, as he recalls his early love, Dara:

Bare-chested, Adam played facing the expansive picture windows. His breathing was inseparable from the sweep of his right arm. He gave himself over to the music with the tenderness of a lover. Chords punctuated melody as haunting as death.

As he played, he recalled Dara, standing outside his practice room all those summers ago, listening to him play Bach. At the time, Adam had been playing to center himself—which had to do with Dara. Dara’s listening in felt like an invitation—hers to him—despite her embarrassment at being caught.

Tonight he saw that he’d been too young for this music. A lone violinist was soloist and accompanist, conductor and orchestra. Tonight the sonata erected scaffolding for grief.

And so, music meets writing, and writing meets music, or something like that.

In other news, I’m delighted to share my latest NPR review, on Nell Painter’s collection of essays, I JUST KEEP TALKING. Painter is not only a visual artist, but a major American historian, whose HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE changed the way I see the world.

May your September bring you music and joy.

Love, Martha

P.S. ICYMI, here is last week’s newsletter: Why write criticism?