Roots brings together violin and bayan in a concentrated sixteen-minute chamber work. The pairing is direct and distinctive: the violin’s line can cut, sing, and fracture, while the bayan carries breath, resonance, pressure, and a memory of folk sonority without reducing the work to folk style.

The title suggests origin, inheritance, and subterranean continuity. Rather than presenting a sequence of separate movements, the work unfolds as a single arc of changing tempo regions: nostalgic, obsessive, tragic, lamenting, mysterious, and returning.

• Form One continuous movement.
• Forces Violin and bayan.
• Premiere Hannover, 2016.

The work was commissioned by Akkordeonfest Hannover and premiered by violinist Katrin Rabus with bayanist Elsbeth Moser. Its instrumentation places the bayan — an instrument strongly associated with Russian and Eastern European musical worlds — inside Auerbach’s larger chamber-music language of compression, memory, and expressive extremity.

The catalogue’s tempo sequence reveals the work’s dramatic contour: from Andante nostalgico through Allegro ossessivo, Adagio misterioso, Tragico, recitativo libero, Adagio lamentoso, Agitato, and a final return to tempo.

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