Chaconne

A lone, unaccompanied violin opens with a rigid theme in D minor stretching the physical boundaries of the instrument with complex chords, rapid string-crossings, and synonymous voices. The pure sound of Maxim Vengerov playing Bach’s Chaconne sweeps into my ears, the music tuned to a lower pitch (A=415) rather than the usual modern setup. But this is not a typical recording.

Filmed in Auschwitz, Vengerov plays with power and resilience, a testament to the 6 million Jews who were systematically murdered in the Holocaust. Vengerov’s Chaconne is different. He doesn’t play the notes for perfection, he wrestles them. His music is agonizing, cutting deep into the grief and pain echoed by those empty halls.
I often return to this recording as I reflect on my own Jewish heritage. As I watch him play, I imagine the spirit around him, the common feeling of grief for the vast and devastating loss of life that occurred, yet the powerful ending of Chaconne becomes a defiant reclamation for the survival of the Jewish people.

This piece is fully rendered from my imagination as I watch Vengerov perform. The sky above contains Biblical stories of the survival of the Israelites while the village below is a Jewish shtetl, the two juxtaposed to represent their ancient and modern history. The buildings defy perspective and reality, forming a dream-like setting and encapsulating the violinist, who, meant to embody an outsider’s view, plays the Chaconne through the streets of the shtetl. She is much larger and other-worldy as her music amplifies the violin’s crying chords as a testament to the enduring resilience of the Jewish people.