Bernard Haitink – Emily's Music Dump

July 17, 2017June 23, 2021

Brahms – Double Concerto – Mendelssohn – Violin Concerto

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Concerto for Violin and Violoncello in A Minor, Op. 102

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64

Itzhak Perlman, Violin

Mstislav Rostropovich, Violoncello

Concertgebouworkest, Amsterdam (Bernard Haitink, Conductor)

Recorded 1983, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

I mean, if they could have only gotten a couple of decent soloists this would have been a home run.

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (Barry Millington, 1988):

Brahms: Concerto for Violin and Violoncello in A minor, Op. 102

“I must tell you that I have had the strange notion of writing a concerto for violin and cello!” wrote Brahms to the conductor Franz Wullner in August 1887. A few days later, in a letter to Clara Schumann, the description was amended to “happy notion” – an indication that Brahms had relished the challenge of producing a work in such an unusual, and potentially problematic, medium.

The Double Concerto comes at the end of a line of substantial orchestral works: 4 symphonies, 3 concertos, 2 serenades, 2 overtures and the ‘Haydn’ Variations. It was written in 1887, during the second of the three summers Brahms spent at Hofstettern on Lake Thun in Switzerland, and was performed in Cologne on October 18 the same year.

The composer clearly intended the work as a gesture of reconciliation to his violinist friend Joseph Joachim, from whom he had become estranged over the latter’s divorce, and it was Joachim and his quartet colleague Robert Hausmann that Brahms had in mind when composing the work.

The short opening orchestral statement is reflected upon by the solo cello in a quasi-improvisatory passage, soon followed by another in which the two solo instruments exchange ideas in the non-competitive spirit that is to characterize the work as a whole.

Just as these extended solos recall the opening of the B Flat Piano Concerto, so the gently weaving figurations of the central F Major sections of the Andante look back to the slow movements of both piano concertos. The finale is a fusion of sonata and conventional rondo elements.

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64

Although not the only work Mendelssohn wrote for the medium (a youthful concerto in D minor has also been occasionally performed), the E minor is invariably referred to as the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.

It is, without doubt, his finest concerto for any instrument and its passionate advocate, the late Hans Keller, was prepared to put it alongside the masterpieces of Beethoven and Brahms as “arguably the greatest of them all.”

It was written for the violinist Ferdinand David while Mendelssohn was on a recuperative holiday at Soden near Frankfurt am Main in September 1844 and was first heard the following March at the Leipzig Gewandhaus under the Danish composer Niels Gade.

The greatness of the work lies partly in its formal innovations, but primarily in the compelling potency of its melodic inspirations. Dispensing with the conventional opening orchestral tutti, Mendelssohn launches his solo instrument immediately on a poignant cantilena soaring high above the stave.

The slow movement too is dominated by an intensely lyrical theme both announced and expanded exclusively by the soloist. The first two movements are joined by a transition effected by a sustained bassoon note, scarcely sufficient to quell the applause that might have been expected in the nineteenth century.

A further structural innovation is the placing of the first movement cadenza at the end of the development section rather than later in the movement, following the recapitulation.

The finale, which is introduced by an eloquent little meditation by the soloist, is in the elfin dancing style – and indeed in the key – of Mendelssohn’s Overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

TRACK LISTING:

Johannes Brahms – Concerto for Violin and Violoncello in A Minor, Op. 102

Allegro [16:51]
Andante [7:44]
Vivace non troppo [8:41]

Felix Mendelssohn – Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64

Allegro molto appassionato [12:59]
Andante [8:12]
Allegro non troppo – Allegro non vivace [6:27]

FINAL THOUGHT:

This CD is not f-ing around (excuse my German!). In the late-1980s, Bernard Haitink conducted the finest band in the land and Perlamn and Rostropovich were no slouches either!

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company)

February 14, 2014June 23, 2021

Beethoven – Triple Concerto – Opus 56

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827)

(Triple Concerto) Concerto in C for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Opus 56

Piano Trio No. 11 in G, Opus 121a

London Philharmonic Orchestra (Bernard Haitink, conductor)

Beaux Arts Trio – Menahem Pressler (piano), Isidore Cohen (violin), Bernard Greenhouse (cello)

Recorded in London 1/1977 (Opus 56); La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland 5/1979 (Opus 121a)

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

I didn’t really have anything special to do on Valentine’s Day (don’t cry for me I’m going out tomorrow night – the restaurants in L.A. are a nightmare on Valentine’s Day) – so I finally have time to write this about this recording of the Beethoven Triple Concerto and… it is fabulous!

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (by Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht – translation by Michael Talbot):

The Drive For Unity

Beethoven Concerto in C, Op. 56 (Triple Concerto)

Beethoven worked on the Triple Concerto during 1803-1804; it was not published, however, until 1807.

The first drafts appear already on the last pages of the “Eroica” sketchbook and are continued in the large “Eroica” sketchbook.

The concerto is dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz, but Beethoven’s later “right-hand man,” Anton Felix Schindler, claimed that this “Concertino,” as he called it, was intended for the Archduke Rudolph, the violinist Karl August Seiler, and the cellist Anton Krafft.

The same source informs us that the first performance of the concerto took place in May 1808 in the Augarten, Vienna; the concert that featured it belonged to the series that Mozart had inaugurated in 1782.

The audience’s reception was frosty; according to Schindler, the unnamed artists who performed it (and thus indirectly also Beethoven) “earned no applause at all, for they had taken the affair too lightly.” Schindler goes on: “It (the concerto) remained undisturbed until 1830.”

When, at the beginning of the present century, Hugo Riemann revised the third edition of Thayer’s five-volume biography of Beethoven, he identified the Triple Concerto as a descendant of the sinfonia concertante, widely cultivated between 1770 and 1790, in which one or more instruments from the orchestra are treated in a solo fashion.

Even without considering the fact that the piano was never thrust into the foreground at that time, Beethoven’s Op. 56 seems to find a more natural home among the new concertante literature in “chamber music” style of the early nineteenth century, where in addition to the principal instrument – in our case the piano – the other instruments are all given rewarding solos to perform.

The genre constituted by compositions identified simple as “concertante” enjoyed universal popularity in Beethoven’s time and was rarely absent from the many public concerts given by travelling virtuosi.

After 1800 Beethoven inclined, in his instrumental compositions, towards share thematic and dynamic contrasts; but on the other hand he also favored a unitary approach to cyclical works, which ultimately, as in the Triple Concerto, leads to the presence of strong motivic links between all the movements.

The opening motive in characteristic rhythm, which rises up in the bass instruments and is repeated one scale degree higher, is the kernel from which all the subsequent musical thoughts of the work grow, sometimes so directly that they become hard to distinguish.

For instance, the second theme of the opening Allegro is more notable for the contrast introduced by its dynamic, compulsively modulating development than for its outline. Its structure allows the three instruments to play about with it in manifold ways and even to anticipate the “alla Polacca” finale in the minor-key transformations, which one might well described as “all’Ungherese.”

In the Largo second movement Beethoven transposes the germinal theme to A flat major. Here a broad, freely developed cantilena again eschews contrasts and leads directly into the last movement.

This Rondo alla Polacca in the traditional triple metre harks back to the opening both motivically and formally. As in the first movement we are treated to a minor-key episode, which gradually unfolds dynamically.

Beethoven – Piano Trio No. 11 in G, Op. 121a

Although by 1811 Beethoven had already almost “wrapped up” his creative legacy in the genre of the large-scale piano trio in several movements with Op. 70 and the B flat trio Op. 97, he returned once more to the fount of his artistic strivings in 1816 with the variations on “Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu” (Op. 121a).

Like the variations for piano trio on themes by Mozart from his early period, the “Kakadu” Variations are based on a simple, trifling song-theme, which he took from Wenzel Muller’s then very successful opera “The Sisters of Prague.”

Nonetheless, the differences from the early compositions are unmistakable: the structure has been loosened, and the freely flowing counterpoints and urgent, intense musical language used in the gradually expanding forms betray the proximity of the last piano sonatas and the “Diabelli” Variations from the same year.

The set of variations opens with an Adagio assai in G minor, an introduction that, despite being thematically related through its concentrated, shifting harmony, still conceals its aim. Only then do we hear from the trio the merry, trilling theme in the style of a Singspiel.

The first variations initially proceed along traditional paths, allowing the instruments to come into prominence in turn and slowly building up to a climax with changing figurations.

The music grows ever more complex, develops into fugato (variation 5) and fugue (variation 7) and introduces strong contradictions which develop in broad forms (variation 9: Adagio espressivo).

The tenth and last variation begins as a gigue, then recalls its G minor middle section the harmony of the introduction, and finally, in a viruoso coda, dissolves the outline of the restated opening Allegretto theme in a whirl.

The course of this work once again demonstrates in a nutshell how Beethoven found an individual way forward from the mechanical type of variation of the eighteenth century to the character variation on which he set his stamp.

TRACK LISTING:

1: Beethoven Concerto in C (Triple Concerto) – Allegro [18:03]
2: Beethoven Concerto in C (Triple Concerto) – Largo, Rondo alla Polacca [18:24]
3: Beethoven Piano Trio No. 11 in G, Op. 121a [19:01]

FINAL THOUGHT:

So the audience hated the first performance of the Triple Concerto so much that it wasn’t played again for 23 years. Man, have our standards become so low that this bum Beethoven somehow became a genius over the years – or is our knowledge of classical music so limited that anything by anyone from a couple of hundred years ago is considered great because we’re afraid any criticism would show our ignorance? My vote goes to Beethoven is a genius and that opening night audience in 1808 were a bunch of idiots.

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company)

May 14, 2013June 23, 2021

Beethoven – Piano Concerto No 5 – Emperor

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Concerto No. 5 for Piano & Orchestra in E-flat Major, Opus 73

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 and Eighth Symphonies, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fourth and Fifth Piano 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 Fourth and 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’s grandeur 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.

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company)