Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (Sir Neville Marriner, Conductor)
Recorded in 1970 at Kingway Hall, London and Abbey Road Studios, London
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
I’m sure Josef Suk can play this one in his sleep – and it’s just possible he did.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES:
No liner notes on this budget disc – so how about a little Wikipedia!
Ludwig van Beethoven’sViolin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, was written in 1806.
The work was premiered on 23 December 1806 in the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.
Beethoven wrote the concerto for his colleague Franz Clement, a leading violinist of the day, who had earlier given him helpful advice on his opera Fidelio. The occasion was a benefit concert for Clement. However, the first printed edition (1808) was dedicated to Beethoven’s friend Stephan von Breuning.
It is believed that Beethoven finished the solo part so late that Clement had to sight-read part of his performance. Perhaps to express his annoyance, or to show what he could do when he had time to prepare, Clement is said to have interrupted the concerto between the first and second movements with a solo composition of his own, played on one string of the violin held upside down; however, other sources claim that he did play such a piece but only at the end of the program.
The premiere was not a success, and the concerto was little performed in the following decades.
The work was revived in 1844, well after Beethoven’s death, with performances by the then 12-year-old violinist Joseph Joachim with the orchestra conducted by Felix Mendelssohn.
Ever since, it has been one of the most important works of the violin concerto repertoire, and it is frequently performed and recorded today.
The Romance for Violin and Orchestra No. 1 in G major, Op. 40 is a piece for violin and orchestra, one of two such compositions, the other being Romance No. 2 in F major, Op. 50.
It was written in 1802, four years after the second romance, and was published 1803, two years before the publication of the second. Thus, this romance was designated as Beethoven’s first.
TRACK LISTING:
1-3: Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 61
4: Romance No. 1 in G Major, Opus 40
5: Romance No. 2 in F Major, Opus 50
FINAL THOUGHT:
Not the most dynamic recording of Beethoven’s Opus 61 but still nice to have in the closet – like an old sweater.
Murray Perahia, Piano – The Concertgebouw Orchestra (Bernard Haitink, Conductor)
Recorded at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, 1986
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
You know it – you love it – an excellent recording of a true masterwork.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (by Phillip Ramey):
Similar to his Seventh andEighth Symphonies, Ludwig van Beethoven’sFourth and FifthPiano Concertos stand in considerable contrast to one another.
No. 4 (1804-06) is perhaps the most poetic and intimate of Beethoven’s concertos, a work in which lyricism is predominant; while No. 5 (1809) is animated by what might be termed the composer’s public-square manner, gesture rather than melody given pride of place.
E-flat major was the key favored by Beethoven (and others) for music of “heroic” cast. With the Fifth Concerto, one can go further and make a case for its being a “military” concerto.
Musicologist Alfred Einstein rightly described this score as the “apotheosis of the military concept” in Beethoven’s music, because of its martial rhythms, aggressive themes, motives of triumph and oft-pronunciatory nature.
According to Einstein, compositions in military style were familiar to Beethoven’s audiences: “They expected a first movement in four-four time of a ‘military’ character; and they reacted with unmixed pleasure when Beethoven not only fulfilled but surpassed their expectations.”
Certainly, there had never before been a piano concerto of such grand proportions or with such emphasis laid on brilliant pianistic effect for its own sake.
It has been theorized that between writing the Fourthand Fifth Concertos,Beethoven obtained a new and better piano, one that suggested the possibilities inherent in an improved instrument and provoked him to assign the piano an equal, even sovereign, role (as opposed to its more usual essentially ornamental role) when combining it with orchestra.
In any case, the E-flat Major Concerto’s extraordinary improvisatory cadezalike opening, with its decidedly magisterial tone, must have startled its first audiences, and the unprecedented length of the first movement (in Beethoven’s works, only the corresponding movement of the Eroica Symphony is longer) must have come as a surprise.
Beethoven wrote his Fifth Concerto during the invasion year 1809, when his native Vienna was besieged by Napoleon’s armies – a fact that surely dictated the music’s military atmosphere.
Occasionally, the composer took refuge from the bombardment in a basement room, where he covered his head with pillows to lessen the din. “The course of events has affected by body and soul,” he wrote “[and] life around me is wild and disturbing, nothing but drums, cannons, soldiers…”
Beethoven developed a case of war fever, which expressed itself in outbursts of rage against Napoleon and the French.
During the occupation of the city, he was once observed in a coffeehouse shaking his fist at a French officer, shouting, “If I were a general and knew as much about strategy as I know about counterpoint, I would give you something to think about!”
The subtitle “Emperor” was appended not by Beethoven or its first publisher, but by tradition. It may have arisen from an incident that supposedly occurred at the Vienna premiere, on February 12, 1812, during the French occupation (Carl Czerny was soloist; there is no record that Beethoven himself ever played the work; by that time he grown too deaf to perform).
A French soldier in the audience, taken with the Concerto’sgrandeur and imperiousness, reportedly cried, “C’est l’Empereur!” If true, the outburst cannot have pleased the staunchly republican composer, who in 1804 had angrily eradicated a dedication to Napoleon on the autograph score of his Eroica Symphony when Napoleon proclaimed himself Emperor of France.
The first performance of the E-flat Major Concerto evidently took place in Leipzig on November 28, 1811, at the seventh Gewandhaus Concert. The soloist was Johann Schneider, who may have been a Beethoven student, and the conductor was one Johann Phillip Christian Schultz.
The piece was enthusiastically received by the audience, and a January 1, 1812 noticed in the Allegemeine musikalische Zeitung described it as “undoubtedly one of the most original, imaginative, effective but also most difficult of all existing concertos.”
TRACK LISTING:
1: Allegro [20:30]
2: Adagio un poco moto [8:30]
3: Rondo: Allegro [9:43]
FINAL THOUGHT:
While the 20 minute opening movement is genius in a military-style bombastic kind of way, it’s really the 2nd movement that is the star here. From all I’ve heard of Beethoven’s work – it seems to me he really knew what he was doing.
Other than sounding like it was recorded in a high school gymnasium (lots of echo), when you cut through the sound clutter, the performance is excellent.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (by Misha Donat):
Beethoven published his first three sonatas, Opus 2 (1-3) in 1796, when he was in his mid-20s, and dedicated them to his former teacher Haydn.
Two decades and two dozen piano sonatas later, he began work on what was to be his final group of five sonatas. For some time he had been attempting to find German equivalents for the traditional Italian musical forms; and in 1817, he instructed his publisher to use the term “Hammerklavier” instead of “pianoforte” for all his future piano works.
His instruction was, however, unambiguously carried out only in the case of Opus 106 – the second of his late sonatas. As a grand sonata in four distinct movements, the Hammerklavierstands apart from its companions. It is a work of unprecedented scope, with the broadest slow movement Beethoven ever wrote for the piano, and a finale consisting of a colossal fugue – which makes huge demand on performer and listener alike.
Like the Sonata Opus 111, the Hammerklavier was dedicated to Beethoven’s staunchest patron, Archduke Rudolph of Austria, and its fanfare-like opening phrase was designed to fit the words, “Vivat, vivat Rudolphus!”
Opus 111 was Beethoven’s last sonata, and also his final work in his characteristically dramatic key of C minor. This time there are only two movements; the first begins with an intense slow introduction, out of which the Allegro explodes with force.
The finale is a set of variations on a serene ‘Arietta.’ The variations gradually increase in intricacy until they reach a long-sustained trill, and the sonata comes to a close in an atmosphere of profound calm.
TRACK LISTING:
1-4: Piano Sonata in B flat Major, Opus 106 – “Hammerklavier”
5-6: Piano Sonata in C minor, Opus 111
FINAL THOUGHT:
I used to love with my new copy of BBC Magazine would come in the mid-1990s with the CD glued to the cover. The glue would tear the cover of the magazine off until they decided (after the first few issues and probably thousands of complaints) to put the CD in plastic. The performances were always hit or miss but I have a nice nostalgia for all those discs in my collection.
Zino Francescatti, Violin; Robert Casadesus, Piano
Recorded in France (Sonata No. 5, 1961 – Sonata No. 9, 1958) (CBS Records)
ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
And the hits just keep on coming – ah, nice.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES:
No liner notes on this budget disc but it’s such a pleasant recording you really don’t need to know anything about it – just sit back, get a glass of wine and relax.
TRACK LISTING:
1-4: Sonata No. 5 in F Major for Violin and Piano, Opus 24 – “Spring”
5-7: Sonata No. 9 in A Major for Violin and Piano, Opus 47 – “Kreutzer”
FINAL THOUGHT:
The easiest review I’ve had to do thus far. I like it. Whenever I hear this recording, I can’t help but think of the scene in “Love & Death” where Woody Allen and Diane Keaton play the opening strains of the Spring Sonata.
If you want the hits, you’ve got the hits – this is one classic recording – a great performance by Wilhelm Kempff on Piano.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (by Joan Chissell):
“L’adolsecent, l’homme, le dieu” was LIszt’s description of Beethoven’s successive stages of development so patent in the 32 piano sonatas completed between 1795 and 1822, a series as remarkable for the composer’s constant quest for variety of pattern within the traditional sonata mold as his response to the challenge of the piano itself in crucial days of the instrument’s development in strength, compass and colour.
The Grande Sonate Pathetique, as its publisher first issued it, dates from 1798-99. Never before had Beethoven extracted more drama from C minor, always his most faithful key, than in the turbulent opening movement starting with an imposing Grave introduction twice recalled in the course of the sonata-form argument (like Clementi and Dussek he had already tried out a similar device in a sonata written at eleven).
It is no surprise to learn from letters that already in the later 1790s he was secretly tormented by early symptoms of deafness. Assuagement comes in the idyllic, recurrent song melody of the Adagio cantabile in A flat, through tension mounts in two contrasting episodes. The finale is an urgent sonata-rondo back in the home key of C minor.
Composed in 1801, during an ill-starred romance with its youthful dedicatee, the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, the C sharp minor Sonata testifies to Beethoven’s tireless pursuit of formal adventure: like its predecessor in E flat it carries the subtitle “quasi una fantasia.”
His boldest stroke was in opening with an Adagiososenuto, music sufficiently hypnotic in its calm to remind the poet-critic Rellstab of moonlight on Lake Lucerne – hence the nickname apprended after Beethoven’s death.
For the Allegretto, a grecious old-style minuet and trio following without sharp break. Beethoven slips enharmonically into D flat major. The finale in the home key is a passionately disturbed Presto agitato in sonata form.
Following hard on the heels of the “Moonlight” in the same year of 1801, the D major Sonata reverts to a traditional four-movement sequence. The nickname “Pastoral”came from the publisher Cranz. But the music exudes enough of the relaxation and simple joy Beethoven always found in the country (openly confessed in the Sixth Symphony) to make it easy to believe Czerny’s contention that the sonata was one of the composer’s favorites.
Repeated low Ds, like a rustic drone, support the opening tune of the sonata-form Allegro. The lilting main theme of the sonata-rondo finale, again with a drone-like accompaniment, is still more redolent of the village green.
Though the D minor-major Andante, with its regular, march-like tread, is tinged with regret, the Scherzo is one of the composer’s most playful.
Beethoven was in his 40th year when composing the F sharp major Sonata in 1809, after four years away from the genre: in total contrast to its story F minor predecessor, the “Appassionata,”this gracious work in only two movements was dedicated to the Countess Therese von Brunsvik, who though no longer accepted as his legendary “immortal beloved,” was one of the few closest to his heart whose character approached his own exalted ideals of womanhood.
With the unpredictability of genius Beethoven rejects heart-searching, after only the briefest Adagio cantabile introduction, to write a radiantly lyrical Allegro non troppo in concisely expressed sonata form. In the scherzando-like concluding Allegro vivace, also in (for him) the unusual key of F sharp major, he springs constant surprises of tonality, register and dynamics.
TRACK LISTING:
1-3: Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Opus 13 – “Pathetique”
4-6: Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp Minor, Opus 27 No. 2 – “Moonlight”
7-10: Piano Sonata No. 15 in D Major, Opus 28 – “Pastorale”
11-12: Piano Sonata No. 24 in F sharp Major, Opus 78
FINAL THOUGHT:
Like a warm blanket or a favorite pair of shoes, these sonatas will never let you down. A great recording.
If Alkan do it – so can you (actually you probably can’t but Marc-Andre Hamelin comes pretty damn close in this brilliant recording)
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES [EXCERPT] (by Francois Luguenot):
Charles-Valentin Alkan: A Life’s Works
The Grande Sonate and Sonatine, brought together on this recording, are Charles-Valentin Alkan’s first and last masterpieces for solo piano and illustrate two extremes in the composer’s aesthetic development.
In many respects, the Grande Sonate Op. 33is one of the pinnacles not only of Alkan’s output but of the entire Romantic piano repertoire.
In writing a piano sonata, Alkan was reviving and preserving a form which was not merely undervalued by the French but was even described by Schumann as being “worn out.”
In the hands of this extremely discreet composer, it could almost claim to be a manifesto: composed in the wake of the 1848 Revolution, and dedicated to his father, it is prefaced by what constitutes one of the rare official examples of the composer’s taking an aesthetic stand on an extremely controversial matter: programme music.
His text is not to be overlooked:
Much has been said and written about the limitations of expression through music. Without adopting this rule or that, without trying to resolve any of the vast questions raised by this or that system, I will simply say why I have given these four pieces such titles and why I have sometimes used terms which are simply never used by others.
It is not a question here, of imitative music; even less so of music seeking its own justification, seeking to explain its particular effect or its validity, in a realm beyond the music itself. The first piece is a Scherzo, the second an Allegro, the third and fourth an Andante and a Largo; but each one corresponds, to my mind, to a given moment in time, to a specific frame of mind, a particular state of the imagination. Why should I not portray it? We will always have music in some form and it can but enhance our ability to express ourselves: the performer without relinquishing anything of his individual sentiment, is inspired by the composer’s own ideas: a name and an object which in the realm of the intellect form a perfect combination, seem, when taken in a material sense, to clash with one another. So, however ambitious this information may seem at first glance, I believe that I might be better understood and better interpreted by including it here than I would be without it.
Let me also call upon Beethoven in his authority. We know that, towards the end of his career, this great man was working on a systematic catalogue of his major works. In it, he aimed to record the plan, memory or inspiration which gave rise to each one.
The composition and publication of the Grande Sonate occurred at a crucial moment in the composer’s life.
During the summer of 1848, when the Revolution was not yet over, Zimmerman, Alkan’s teacher, resigned from his position as Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatoire.
It would seem natural enough that Charles-Valentin, his most brilliant and promising student, should succeed him; but in the troubled climate of the time, and as a result of some predictable intrigue, it was in fact a second-rate musician, Antoine Marmontel, who was to gain the post.
This was a particularly bitter pill for Alkan to swallow; he was to fade gradually further into obscurity and renounce all public and official posts.
The Revolution was also to harm any publicity which might have surrounded the publication of the Grande Sonate; although it was well heralded in the music magazines, it would appear that there was not one single review of the piece, nor one public performance thereafter.
The British pianist Ronald Smith is fully justified in thinking that he brought the piece to life in America in 1973 when he gave it its first public performance!
TRACK LISTING:
1-4: Grande Sonate ‘Les Quatre Ages’ Op. 33 [38:48]
5-8: Sonatine Op. 61 [18:05]
9: Barcarolle Op. 65 no. 6 [3:41]
10: Le Festin D’Esope Op. 39 no. 12 [8:40]
FINAL THOUGHT:
Seriously, if you’ve heard the Grande Sonate ‘Les Quatre Ages’you would feel as I do – completely stunned that this great piano work didn’t have its public premiere until 1973. Alkan got screwed.
Concerto for Jew’s Harp, Mandora and Orchestra in F Major
Munich Chamber Orchestra – Hans Stadlmair (Orfeo)
Recorded July 31, 1984 – Studio II des Bayerischen Rundfunks – Munich
ONE SENTENCE REVIEW:
Finally, a Jew’s Harp concerto worth listening to.
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (including same spelling and grammar) (by Dieter Kirsch):
For many music-lovers this recording may come as something of a surprise. It is certainly a curiosity.
Who would have thought that a “common folk instrument” like the Jew’s harp (or Guimbard) had had classical concertos written for it, and by Beethoven’s teacher of composition at that!
And what is a mandora anyway?
A glance at the history of the Jew’s harp will soon make us realize, however, that here we are dealing with an instrument of long and venerable lineage.
Old surviving specimens, pictures, sculptures that this is one of the most ancient and widespread of all musical instruments.
During the 19th century in Europe it even enjoyed a brief heyday outside the confines of folk music, with its own virtuoso exponents and repertoire of written works.
No other musical instrument has borne so many different names: in English Jew’s harp or Jew’s trump (origin of name unknown), in German Maultrommel (“mouth drum”) or Brummeisen (“buzzing-iron”), in Latin Crembalum, in Italian Aura (“breeze” or “breath”) and Harmonica or, again as in the poem by the minnesinger Friedrich von Hausen, “Summer” (“buzzer” or “vibrator”). This later reference would appear to be the earliest written evidence of the Jew’s harp in Europe.
From the 14th century onwards there are numerous pictorial representations of the instrument, showing it mainly in the hands of simple peasant folk but also occasionally in more august surroundings.
The cultural movement most fascinated by the sound of this strange instrument was that of the German Romantics.
After the 1800 we find more and more reports of travelling virtuosi (Kunert, Koch, Eulenstein) who were able to play on up to 16 different instruments and also in two parts. Several of the Romantic poets and novelists were so moved on hearing these excellent artists that they immortalized the instrument in their writings (e.g., Jean Paul in his novel “Hesperus”).
Justinus Kerner, the Swabian poet, physician, occultist and player of the Jew’s harp, wrote of his instrument: “Fortissimo and piano dolce can be expressed on the Jew’s harp most magnificently, and it is excellently suited for playing fantasies of one’s own; suited to convey outpourings of pure feeling in tones from better worlds, as the Aeolian harp conveys the feeling of Spring or a starry night.”
The name mandora has cropped up several times during the course of musical history.
Although the mandora of the Middle Ages is quite a different instrument from the 18th century mandora, they have one thing in common: they are both “little sisters” of the lute.
The mandora for which Albrechtsberger wrote his concerto with Jew’s harp is described in his textbook on composition (1790) under the heading “percussion instruments” as being “A small kind of lute, played in just the same manner, but tuned differently. It has only eight courses made of sheep’s gut.”
The lower four courses (pairs of strings) were tuned differently each time according to the key in which the piece was to be played. The simplification of the instrument in this way (the lute proper is an extremely difficult instrument to play) naturally results in a corresponding lack of musical substance: the player is often merely required to strum a few basic accompaniment patterns.
The similarities to the classic guitar are obvious. It is not surprising that the mandora had its greatest following among those groups of people who wanted to enjoy some convivial music-making without having too many technical demands made on them. Hence the reason why most of the surviving copies of music for mandora have been found in monastery libraries.
The history of the concerto recorded here can likewise be traced back to a monastery. In 1765, returning from his coronation in Frankfurt, Joseph II sojourned at Melk Priory.
Here he heard Father Bruno Glatzl, renowned for his virtuosity on the Jew’s harp. In the prior’s diary we can read: “lusit coram Majestatibus on two Jew’s harps. Namely, he played the Primus and the Secundus both at once, making from the notes minuets, concertos and a thousand other fine artistic things…”
A mandora provided the accompaniment.
At the time a Melk Priory scholar whose duty it was to play the organ on such festive occasions, Albrechtsberger is sure to have been present. His proficiency as an organist finally took Albrechtsberger to Vienna, where in the years that followed he composed his concertos for Jew’s harp, mandora and strings.
Judging from the numberings, Albrechtsberger must have written at least seven such concertos.
Three of them have survived, those composed in the years 1976, 1770 and 1771, and are preserved today in the Budapest National Library Szechenyi (Ms.mus 2551-2553).
All the “concerti” are autographed and prescribe the use of several Jew’s harps functioning at different pitches, whereas for the lower part Albrechtsberger employs letters without indicating exactly which octave pitch is intended. In the case of the E major concerto there exists a handwritten “viola prima” part, which, as it includes all the chief melodic material of the mandora part, is obviously intended as an alternative to this. (Dieter Kirsch – Translation: Avril Watts).
TRACK LISTING:
Concerto for Jew’s Harp, Mandora and Orchestra in E major
Concerto for Jew’s Harp, Mandora and Orchestra in F major
FINAL THOUGHTS:
If you can own only one Jew’s harp recording, make it this one!
Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827)
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES:
The work was revived in 1844, well after Beethoven’s death, with performances by the then 12-year-old violinist Joseph Joachim with the orchestra conducted by Felix Mendelssohn.
Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company)
