Simone Fontanelli
LEWIS
(ÒWhy We Remember...?)
For solo violin (2003)
This piece has been written for and dedicated to my friend the violinist Lewis Kaplan. Lewis is a great musician and a wonderful teacher, a nice man full of humour who loves, when in good company, to tell jokes. One of his favourite jokes begins with the sentence: ÒWhy We Remember Seventeen-ninety-nine?Ó. How Lewis was saying that was so theatrical end expressive that for me was musical material. It became the opening line of my piece.
I wrote this piece right after my first summer at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in 2003. Lewis had invited me there and we had the opportunity to know each other, and all the moments when, observing Lewis, he was looking happy or melancholy, pensive or serene, helped me in finding ideas to this work. In the widest meaning of the word, this is a piece about ÒmemoriesÓ (thatÕs ÒWhy We Remember...?Ó) which everyone has.