a twisted tree grows slowly
for solo violin
A twisted tree grows slowly is a piece for solo violin. The recording was done by Irvine Arditti at the Vienna Summer Music Festival in June 2019 held in Vienna Austria.
The piece consists of two outer lines that both chromatically moves ascending and descending, each expressing a trunk of wisteria growing twined around each other. This is coming from the composer's memory from kindergarten where many big (at least for toddler that is) wisteria trellis were seen. He found this tree strange that it had intertwined trunks and flowers that were coming down from its brunches instead of going up. A strong imagery of this tree growing slowly but twisted has impressed the composer's mind. Ever since then, this duality of something slow but forceful has been something that composer was eager to express.
The piece consists of three sections with the first and the last ones being symmetric, the middle section being the contrast and the core of the tree, not necessarily the physical one but rather the conceptual one. The process of composition started with previously mentioned two chromatic lines meeting at the center, which is the note C, and creates tremolo part as a vibration created from growing trunks. Rather elegant melody with quirky vibrato and the static pulse on pizzicato expresses the two very contrasting characterists of the tree.