Òscar’s iconic work continues to enjoy a growing performing life
Òscar Colomina i Bosch’s Shpigl for solo violin has received two recent performances in Madrid and Bern, further consolidating the continuing life of the work within the repertoire of young international violinists.
On Monday 1 June 2026, violinist Eduard Kollert performed Shpigl at the Sony Auditorium in Madrid, as part of an academic concert of the Violin Chair of Professor Zakhar Bron at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía.
The work will also be performed by Hyeonyeong Jang on 11 June 2026 at 18:00 at the Hochschule der Künste Bern, continuing the relationship between the piece and a new generation of performers working in leading European music institutions.
Commissioned by the Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition, with support from the Britten-Pears Foundation, Shpigl was written for the Junior Finals of the 2016 competition and premiered at Duke’s Hall, Royal Academy of Music, London. Its title means “mirror” in Yiddish, and the work takes as its point of departure Yehudi Menuhin’s idea of life as a journey of search and transformation.
The piece explores this idea through veiled memories of the violin repertoire, elements of improvisation and the theatrical use of space, requiring the performer to shape not only the musical material but also the physical journey of the performance.
Since its premiere, Shpigl has developed a significant performing history. After being heard at the Menuhin Competition, it was described by John Adams as “a small masterpiece of both musical and dramatic imagination” and was later programmed by Adams in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella / Noon to Midnight festival at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Subsequent performances by young violinists in the United Kingdom, Portugal, Austria, Spain and Switzerland underline the work’s continuing presence as a distinctive contribution to the contemporary solo violin repertoire.
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