The Art of the Violin
A recital by exceptional young musicians in the spirit of Yehudi Menuhin.
Alan Zhang · Francis Bodis · Justin Peng, violin
Sunday 27 September 2026, 3.30pm – 5.00pm
St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Road, London SW7 4RL
Free admission · Voluntary donations welcome
The programme is deliberately wide. Bach asks one player to build counterpoint and structure on a single instrument. Paganini pushes technique to its limit, then requires that technique to serve line and imagination. By the time the tradition reaches Ysaÿe it has been absorbed and rewritten: the writing is denser, quicker to react, and closer to the sound of the player holding the bow.
This is not a display concert. What makes it worth an hour is how differently the same instrument behaves in different hands — how four strings can be made to sound architectural, theatrical, entirely private, or very close to out of control.
For three young players the task is therefore not only to play the works well, but to find a position inside a tradition. Maturity, at this stage, rarely arrives as a bigger sound or a faster finger. It arrives as a sense of when to hold back and when to take the risk; of how to give a phrase direction; of how to let silence do some of the work.
Across the afternoon the language keeps changing — Leipzig in 1720, Genoa, Moscow, Brussels, and a piece written in our own decade. The instrument’s central appeal does not change with it. It stays capable of extreme restraint and extreme drama, of rational order and, within a single bar, of something that sounds like losing control on purpose.
Programme
Alan Zhang · 14 mins
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
Sonata No. 3 in C major for solo violin, BWV 1005
III. Largo · 4 mins
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Méditation, Op. 42 No. 1
from Souvenir d’un lieu cher, Op. 42 · 10 mins
Francis Bodis · 9 mins
Pablo de Sarasate (1844–1908)
Introduction and Tarantella, Op. 43
for violin and piano · 6 mins
Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840)
Caprice No. 18 in C major, Op. 1
Corrente — Allegro, for solo violin · 3 mins
Justin Peng · 31 mins
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
Sonata No. 1 in G minor for solo violin, BWV 1001
I. Adagio · II. Fuga · 10 mins
Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840)
Caprice No. 24 in A minor, Op. 1
for solo violin · 5 mins
Louis Spohr (1784–1859)
Scherzo, Op. 135 No. 2
from Six Salon Pieces, Op. 135 · 4 mins
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921), arr. Eugène Ysaÿe (1858–1931)
Caprice d’après l’Étude en forme de valse, Op. 52 No. 6
arranged for violin and piano · 7 mins
Aleksey Igudesman (born 1973)
Applemania
for violin · 5 mins
Running time
Approximately 55 minutes of music, within a programme running from 3.30pm to 5.00pm.
Alan Zhang 14 mins · Francis Bodis 9 mins · Justin Peng 31 mins
Admission
Free admission, and no ticket is needed. Registering below simply helps us set out the right number of chairs.
Voluntary donations are welcome at the door. They go towards the cost of presenting Inchwise Music’s concerts and are received by Inchwise Edtech Ltd — they are not a collection for St Stephen’s Church.
St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Road, London SW7 4RL — nearest station Gloucester Road (District, Circle and Piccadilly lines).
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