There was no plan, it just happened: violinist Ada Witczyk on the Růžičková Composition Competition and her New Baroque disc arising out of it

Ada Witczyk performing music from the 2023 Růžičková Composition Competition

Violinist Ada Witczyk‘s new album, New Baroque – Sonatas on First Hand Records, features new sonatas for baroque violins and harpsichord, the six winning works of the 5th Růžičková Composition Competition 2024, with violinist Simon Standage and harpsichordist Dominika Maszczyńska. Ada founded the Růžičková Composition Competition in 2020 and each year composers are invited to write for Baroque instruments using a different form, this year it was sonata form with either violin and harpsichord, or a trio sonata for two violins and harpsichord. The 2024 competition received over 50 entries, the biggest since 2020; that first competition received just over 60, but as Ada points out, people had time on their hands.

Ada’s first disc was an EP, New Baroque, performing music commissioned from composers who had won the first competition. She feels that it is important to support the participating composers and to strengthen her bond with them. The EP received a very positive reception, which led to the production of the new album.

In the competition, Ada feels it is important to recognise the work each composer has put into their pieces and so they play through every entry. For each competition, the judging panel has involved Simon Standage (Ada’s teacher) and arts manager Nick Hardisty (currently executive director of Lake District Music) along with the musicians involved in the competition. They play through everything because Ada does not feel that simply hearing a recording does work justice; playing means you feel the piece in your fingers. Also, they get something different out of the instruments, using the colours and sounds of gut strings. Finally, they reduce the entries to a shortlist, though the process can take an entire day. The scores are considered anonymously, and they only find out who the composers are once the shortlist is created.

There tends to be a huge mixture of pieces, and this is reflected by the works on the new album. Alexander Unseth is relatively young (born in 2002) and is still studying; his piece, One of Seven, is about his siblings. The more established composers include the Italian-American composer, keyboardist and conductor Raphael Amado Fusco and Andrew Wilson, Vice Principal of the National College of Music and Arts. Raphael Amado Fusco’s Sonata for Baroque Violin and Harpsichord uses the composer’s experience in opera and jazz to create French Baroque dances with jazz harmonies, a combination of different worlds. Andrew Wilson’s The Summer Folly from his Vanbrugh Sonata is inspired by the architect Sir John Vanbrugh’s sketches and Ada feels you can appreciate the craft in his music.

As individuals, each composer brings their own culture and musical style to the mix, each writes differently, often using the period instruments to tap into a different world. Fabricio Maximiliano Gatta is Argentinian and his Suite for Violin and Harpsichord uses tango, folklore and sentimental melodies, but the Baroque instruments create a magical sound, as if from old movies. Yet, for Ada, it is his voice and relevant today. Whereas David Jason Snow‘s L’Apotheose de Tati references the great French filmmaker Jacques Tati and for Ada the Baroque instruments create a very black and white sound.

Listening to the works of some of the other composers on the disc Ada comments that you wonder why they are not better known so that Salvatore Passantino‘s Ostination comes alive in its first few notes.

Ada started the competition in 2020 when she was thinking about commissioning music after graduating from the Royal College of Music. Ada came across violinist Hilary Hahn‘s In 27 Pieces, a disc of the encores that Hahn had commissioned and Ada fell in love with it. Though she wanted to collaborate with a composer, the arrival of the Pandemic just after she finished her Masters left her frustrated and with lots of time on her hands, plus the feeling that she was not the only person in the creative industries to be struggling.

Simon Standage, Dominika Maszczyńska and Ada Witczyk at recording session for New Baroque — Sonatas

She admits that she can’t sit still. So, as a result of the Pandemic she not only wanted to do something to occupy her brain, but do something creative that would also lift other people’s spirits and create something that would still exist when we came out the other side. She came up with the idea of the competition. Then she was reading One Hundred Miracles, the remarkable memoir of Zuzana Ružicková (written with Wendy Holden), the Czech harpsichordist and Holocaust survivor, who played contemporary music on period instruments.

Ada was lucky enough to receive support from the Viktor Kalabis and Zuzana Růžičková Foundation, established in memory of Zuzana Růžičková and her husband Viktor Kalabis, both harpsichordists. A German journalist came across the news that Ada was planning to name her competition in memory of the Czech harpsichordist, and the journalist reached out to Růžičková’s family. As a result, an email from the Foundation led to their support in enabling the competition to happen.

So in 2020, Ada put something out there but she did not expect the overwhelming response that she received, and she realised that she now needed to do something worthwhile to recognise the work that each of the composers put into creating their works. She had already collaborated on a music project with a friend, a Swiss film director, so one of the prizes was a film of the performance of the winning work. She also contacted publishers and was grateful to Brian Clarke of Prima la Musica for agreeing to publish all the winning entries.

She admits that she did not realise quite how much the project would grow, all she had initially wanted to do was create something worthwhile. At the end of that first competition, people were asking about the second edition of the competition. There was no plan, ‘it just happened’.

Now the 2024 competition is over (the fifth competition), there are some 250 pieces created as a result. Ada wants to concentrate on promoting these, after all not all of them have been recorded. So she will be promoting her new album and giving performances, bringing the pieces into people’s lives. She admits that to programme the works requires courageous programmers and festival directors, as they tend to be wary of contemporary music yet Ada has found that their pieces are loved by the audience.