Intarsia I

for solo violin

“John F. Paul’s Intarsia I [is] a bright and attractive five-minute work for solo violin.  Interspersing vibrant, slashing dissonances with impetuous scale figures, Paul leads the listener through a clearly stated musical discourse.” (Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle)

“John Paul’s Intarsia I reaches back to the Old World to pay homage to the demonic fiddlers of the Gypsy camps who contributed a fierce virtuosity to Western music.  It is a highly concentrated work [that] spins out its thematic content in rapid sequence, then circles back to embellish and develop it with artificial harmonics and double stops.  It generates quite a lot of excitement in the process.” (Richard Chon, Buffalo News)