Joseph Joachim – Emily's Music Dump

July 8, 2021July 8, 2021

Brahms – Clarinet Sonatas, Opus 120 / 1-2

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Clarinet Sonata, Opus 120 / 1

Clarinet Sonata, Opus 120 / 2

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Six Studies In English Folksong

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974)

Duo Concertant

Performed by:

Jonathan Cohler (Clarinet); Judith Gordon and Randall Hodgkinson (Pianos)

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

Jonathan Cohler is definitely the go-to American Clarinetist for Brahms, Vaughan Williams and Milhaud chamber music.

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (Adrian Jack, 1994):

When Brahms first heard the clarinetist Richard Muhlfeld play, he had not written anything for a year. Muhlfeld must have made a big impression – for Brahms wrote a trio and a quintet for him immediately, in 1891, and two sonatas three years later.

He accompanied Muhlfeld himself in the first performances of the sonatas, and gave him his own performing fees whenever they played the works together subsequently; he also granted Mulfeld all the performing rights fees in his lifetime.

Both sonatas really put the clarinet through its paces, but the First is perhaps more varied as well as more dramatic than the Second. The Second has its own mellow appeal, though it packs power into its central movement and the closing pages of its Finale.

Brahms also made alternative versions of the sonatas, for violin and viola. The viola versions are considered more satisfying and leave the piano parts unaltered; nevertheless, Brahms‘ great friend Joseph Joachim, who disliked arrangements as a rule, played the violin version of these sonatas many times.

Vaughan Williams originally wrote his Six Studies in English Folksong in 1925 for cello and piano. They were published with alternative parts for violin, viola or clarinet!

They are less like studies than reveries, and they are based very freely on existing songs.

Darius Milhaud was such a prolific composer he would not have been out of place in the 18th century, when composers wrote music to be used immediately rather than as a passport to immortality.

His Duo Concertant has the the impressive opus number of 351. He wrote it early in 1956 for the professor of clarinet at the Paris Conservatoire, though it has nothing of the academic about it.

TRACK LISTING:

Johannes Brahms – Sonata In F Minor, Opus 120 / 1

Allegro appassianato – 8:04
Andante, un poco adagio – 5:11
Allegreto graziosa – 4:19
Vivace – 4:59

Johannes Brahms – Sonata In E-Flat, Opus 120 / 2

Allegro amabile – 8:21
Allegro, molto appassianato – 5:23
Andante con moto – Allegro – 7:05

Vaughan Williams – Six Studies In English Folksong – 7:43

Milhaud – Duo Concertant – 6:24

FINAL THOUGHT:

I do love Brahms chamber music – and this a great sampling of virtuoso clarinet at its finest. And Mr. Cohler is quite the artist. Highly recommended for a lazy Sunday afternoon.

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

June 26, 2019July 8, 2021

Brahms – The String Quintets

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

The String Quintets

Quintet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 88

Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111

Produced by Gary Schultz

Recording Engineer: Charles Harbutt

Julliard String Quartet (Robert Mann & Joel Smirnoff, Violins; Samuel Rhodes, Viola; Joel Krosnick, Cello) & Walter Trampler, Viola

Recording Location: Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Troy, NY, May 15-17, 1995.

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

These rarely-played chamber gems get the “Julliard” treatment to gorgeous effect but… actually, well-played doesn’t mean… exciting.

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (Bruce Adophe, 1996):

Fifty years ago, in 1946, the Julliard String Quartet was formed by the 26-year-old Robert Mann, fresh out of the Army. Fifty years before that, in 1896, the 63-year-old Johannes Brahms, despondent over the recent death of Clara Schumann, composed Four Serious Songs (Op. 121) and Eleven Chorale Preludes (Op. 122).

Brahms, who died at 64, lived almost into the twentieth century. Although typecast as a forever-bearded Romantic god trapped in a remote pantheon called “The Three B’s,” the real Johannes Brahms was only a grandfather away from the generation that founded the original Julliard String Quartet.

Brahms is known to have said, “If we cannot write as beautifully as Mozart and Haydn, let us at least write as purely.” The comment discloses Brahms’ neoclassical bent and surely would have been taken as an anti-Wagner, anti-Liszt sentiment.

Liszt’s music was so utterly disliked by Brahms and Joseph Joachim (the great violinists who was the composer’s lifelong champion and sometime friend) that they used the word “lisztisch” to mean “damnable” in their letters.

In his String Quintet in F Major, Op. 88, composed in 1882, Brahms achieves a purity of form, voice-leading and counterpoint, which heralds a master composer in his maturity. The quintet opens with luminous nobility.

This quite soon gives way to a radiant, more intimate theme (related by the viola) clothed in a new key and a stunning new texture which no one but Brahms ever dreamed of: each instrument has its own special light – cello and second violin play pizzicato, but the cello divides the measure in two while the second violin plucks in six; the first violin plays eight notes to the bar while the first viola plays the tune in syncopated sixes; the remaining viola plays a counter-melody in four.

This kind of innovative rhythmic and textural design is a blueprint for much music of our century, suggesting even the polyrhythmic configurations of Elliott Carter (whose quartets the Julliard String Quartet has recorded). But the intricate musical web vanishes – before its complexity can register in the mind – into a simpler heartbeat patter, full of yearning.

The musical purity Brahms reverered is now clearly manifested as he explores these textures throughout the movement with mastery and deep feeling.

The dark, strring Grave ed oppassionato has enough solid mass to warrant an entire movement, yet Brahms employs it as a standard by which to discover the specific gravity of an Allegretto vivaco and a Presto.

These startling juxtapositions – and their subtle harmonic interrelatedness – seem to have been inspired by Beethoven, who, especially in his late string quartets, discovered uncharted areas of human expression through the investigation of extreme contrast. The underlying metaphor is that of our ultimate aloneness (Grave) in the midst of the busy world (Allegretto vivace and Presto).

The Beethoven connection can also be heard in the finale, which opens with two abrupt, stabbing chords in the manner of Beethoven’s string quartets Op. 59, No. 2, and the third movement of Op. 131.

Following the Beethovenian path still further, Brahms unfolds an uplifting fugue, announcing each entrance with those knifelike chords. Beethoven would not have rolled over but rather sat up straight (both images are problematic!) upon hearing Brahms’ tribute.

While the integration of fugue into sonata form conjures up Beethoven, fugal writing itself summons the spirit of Bach. When Brahms died, Joachim told the Neuen Freien Presse, “On the topmost peak stands Bach, the all-powerful, the incomparable, the creator, the great beginning. Mozart follows as the originator of new forms of beauty, and then comes – Brahms.”

The interviewer asked, “And Beethoven?” Joachim then firmly placed Brahms ahead of Beethoven.

In 1996 – as the new millennium approaches – we can understand the anxiety and exhilaration, the astounded concurrence of old and new, which accompanied the turn of the last century.

Claude Debussy, the prophet and pilot of musical modernism, was twenty-eight years old when, in 1890, Brahms composed the Quintet in G Major, Op. 111. It was the year that the Manhattan Building, the first entirely steel-frame building in the world, was erected in Chicago. At sixteen stories, it was (briefly) the world’s tallest building, earning the nickname “Hercules.”

Feeling the shifting winds, Brahms included a message with the manuscript of the quintet when he sent it to his publisher, Fritz Simrock: “With this letter you can bid farewell to my music – because it is certainly time to leave off…”

But the flowing Herculean architecture of Brahms’ Op. 111 Quintet will surely outlast Chicago’s steel-framed edifices. In fact, far from giving the impression that its composer might soon retire, the opening of the G-Major Quintet explodes into existence with a skyscraper of a first theme in the cello, set against a tempest in the remaining four instruments.

Brahms considered rewriting this opening passage to decrease the risk of the solo cello being drowned out. A draft exists in which the upper strings alternate their activity with rests, cutting the massive texture in half. The composer quickly returned to the original conception of the work, deciding that the rewrite sounded flimsy.

Brahms did not always want cellists to be heard, however. In a now famous story, Brahms was playing his own F-Major Cello Sonata with an unsatisfactory partner. The composer let loose at the piano with an enormous fortissimo, causing the cellist to shout over the music, “Maestro, I can’t hear myself at all,” to which Brahms countered, “Lucky for you!”

Brahms loved a full sound and was renowned for his rich, massive tone on the piano. The Julliard Quartet’s Robert Mann remembers a story once told by a musician whose father, many years earlier, had taken him to hear Brahms play his F-Minor Piano Quintet. The boy’s father leaned over just before the music started and whispered to his son, “Listen well to the strings in the opening unison passage because that will be the last time you can hear them at all!”

A friend of Brahms suggested to the composer that the high spirits in the Op. 111 Quintet may have been partially inspired by a public park in Vienna, known as the Prater. “You guessed it!” answered Brahms. “And the delightful girls there.”

If Brahms meant this last comment seriously, he would probably have been referring to the graceful second theme in the first movement, which beings in the violas and is soon passed to the violins – it is as fetching and enchanting a melody as any ever composed.

Brahms professed that his beautiful themes came to him in “instantaneous flashes,” which “quickly vanished,” sometimes before he could capture them on paper. He believed that “the themes that will endure in my music all appear to me in this way.”

Brahms did not mean that he was unconscious when composing, but that he experienced what he called a “semi-trance condition.” Explaining this concept to Joachim, Brahms stated, “You must realized that Milton, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Bach and Beethoven never wholly lost consciousness when they entered that border state.”

Of his own semi-trances, Brahms explained, “I always have a definite purpose in view before invoking the Muse and entering into such a mood.” Brahms decried music which did not achieve a balance between the spirtual and the intellectual plains.

He criticized, for example, the composer August Bungert, whose work was immensely popular throughout Europe in the 1890s, for composing only with the conscious mind.

Brahms predicted such music would soon “go into oblivion.” (He seems to have been coorect so far, although an unexpected Bungert festival is always a possibility given the current craze for thematic programming.)

There is certainly no shortage of inspired, entrancing melody in this quintet. In the Adagio, Brahms unveils another jewel – a sweet, sorrowful melody which abides sublimely on the first viola before the first violin appropriates it permanently.

The violin reveals three tragic visions of the theme (as opposed to the viola’s one). The viola makes a moving, cadenza-like plea towards the movements close, but the violins retain the poignant theme for a fourth and final utterance.

The Un poco allegretto ushers in another heart-stoppingly beautiful tune, this one quality prevails, giving way now and then to momentary disquiet. Here, and throughout this quintet, we find the Brahms so admired by Schoenberg for his ability to fully explore the complexity of a seemingly simple idea.

The five instruments are intricately engaged in imitative counterpoint that is rich without excess, at once elegant and luxurious.

The first viola seems to get an idea for the finale which the other instruments quickly realize is a good one. The Vivace ma non troppo presto takes the listener on a thrilling ride through the Hungarian countryside. It may seem brief, but you’ll find it is just the right length if you try dancing to it (which you’ll want to do).

By the way, it turns out that Brahms did not give up composing quite as soon as he had expected. Soon after completing this quintet, he heard the clarinetist Richard Muhlfeld play and suddenly found himself once again teeming with ideas, burning to compose.

TRACK LISTING:

Johannes Brahms – Quintet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 88

Allegro non troppo ma con brio – 11:19
Grave ed appassionato – Allegretto vivace Tempo 1 – Presto – Tempo 1 – 10:53
Allegro energico – Presto – 5:32

Johannes Brahms – Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111

Allegro non troppo, ma con brio – 12:48
Adagio – 6:26
Un poco allegretto – 6:13
Vivace ma non troppo presto – 5:00

FINAL THOUGHT:

Normally, Brahms’ chamber music is a can’t-miss-bing-bang-bong success. But after listening to this disc… all I feel is… meh. The answer is ‘meh.’ Not terrible, it’s fine… but… ‘meh.’

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

August 19, 2018June 23, 2021

Brahms – Sonatas For Cello And Piano, Op. 38 and Op. 99

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Sonatas For Cello and Piano

Sonata In E Minor, Op. 38

Sonata in F Major, Op. 99

Produced by Jay David Saks

Yo-Yo Ma – Cello

Emanuel Ax – Piano

Recording Date: February 4 & 5, 1985

Recording Location: RCA Studio A, New York City

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

Yeah, um, no – there is nothing to say other than Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax play Brahms.

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (Bernard Jacobson, 1985):

Opus 38 is not merely the first of Brahms’ cello sonatas: it was the first sonata he published for piano with any other instrument. The three surviving violin sonatas came much later and the two for clarinet later still.

Apart from early essays that the fiercely self-critical composer destroyed, including a duet for cello and piano that he played in public when he was 18, the E minor sonata’s only partial predecessor was the C minor scherzo (or Sonatensatz) he contributed in 1853 to a composite sonata written jointly with Schumann and Albert Dietrich as a tribute to the great violinist Joseph Joachim.

If you think about the character of Brahms’ music throughout his life, and in particular about the qualities of color and texture that make it unmistakably Brahms, it is not surprising that, in 1865, he should have approached the chamber-sonata medium through the cello.

The idea that Brahms was indifferent to instrumental color is a misapprehension. The truth is, surely, that he was relatively uninterested in the more obvious and dazzling instrumental effects.

Consider, for instance, his extraordinary use of the piccolo in the Tragic Overture. This usually obstreperous instrument appears in only 15 of the work’s 429 measures – and then exclusively in mysterious pianissimo.

Rather than brilliance, it was warmth of tone that attracted Brahms. And thus it is the clarinet and the horn that he most favors among the woodwind and brass families, and the cello among the strings. In all four symphonies some of the most memorable string effects are those entrusted to the cellos.

Then there are notable solo passages like those in the slow movement of the Second Piano Concerto, not to mention the wonderfully idiomatic handling of the cello in the Double Concerto, where it not only shares the limelight with the traditionally more extrovert violin but often takes the leading role in thematic exposition.

Following this line of thought, we find also that nobody, probably, has ever written a more cello-ish cello sonata than Brahms’ E minor. Through the entire length of the work (written for and dedicated to his friend Dr. Joseph Gansbacher) it is the special dark, introspective quality of the instrument that is stressed.

The very first theme exploits its ability to sing a sonorous melody in the lowest register, and at no point in the three movements does the pitch of the cello writing rise high enough to demand the use of the treble clef.

Tone color aside, the E minor sonata is Brahmsian also in reflecting its composer’s Janus-like relation to music history. Brahms faced equally in two directions: toward the past, and toward the future.

Much of his influence on later music derives from the linear and rhythmic freedom of his style, which was to have an effect at least as far reaching as – and arguably healthier than – that of Wagner’s innovations in the harmonic sphere. But Brahms’ liberation of line and pulse, though new to the 19th century, stems from his enthusiasm for the music of a much more distant past, going back to the time of Palestrina and indeed beyond that to the earliest origins of German song.

With all its freshness of expression, this sonata has a certain almost self-consciously old-fashioned air. In the first movement, it is to be found in the unhurried deployment of traditional sonata-form elements, and, more intangibly, in the kind of legendary, “far away and long ago” feeling to the actual cut of the themes.

The other two movements are more specifically historical in reference, the one recalling the minuet style, the other adopting fugal patterns, and the two together constituting a pair of genre pieces evocative of the baroque sonata or suite.

Yet, even here, the backward look is closely related to a forward influence. It is movements like this quasi-minuet that furnish the clearest link between Mahler’s folkish Knaben Wunderhorn vein and its medieval antecedents, and indeed the contrast of idioms between Brahms’ first two movements suggests a peaceable juxtaposition of past with present and future styles much like that of the corresponding movements in Mahler’s Second Symphony.

As Brahms matured, he turned away from formal displays of fugal erudition like those in the E minor sonata’s finale, the Handel Variations for piano and German Requiem, and instead began to fuse the forms and harmonies of his sonata style more intimately with its contrapuntal elements.

Certainly the finale of the F major cello sonata, written in his Swiss summer retreat at Thun in 1886, wears its learning more lightly than its youthful predecessor. But formidably learned this sonata still is, whether in the polyphonic play and pitting of three groups against duple meter in the finale, or in the subtle rhythmic elisions of the scherzo, or in the piano’s breathtaking pp dolce augmentation of the main theme just before the end of the first movement’s development section.

It is not so much learning, however, as passion that strikes the listener first in this deceptively youthful music. The very beginning of the Allegro vivace immediately proclaims the contrast with the E minor sonata: here all is full-blooded romanticism, felt in the constant tumultuous undermining of the movement’s official 3/4 pulse, and articulated as early as the seventh and eighth measures by the devil-may-care leap to the cello’s topmost register.

If the older Brahms tended more and more to moderation, this sonata is a glorious exception, as the “vivace,” “passionata” and “molto” of its movement-headings already suggest. Perhaps, as in the Double Concerto written the following year, it was the return to his old love of the cello combined with the inspiration provided by the gifted young cellist Robert Hausmann that prompted this resurgence of expressive ardor.

It is evident also in the plangent pizzicatos and subsequent Klangfarben-like coloristic effects of the Adagio affettuoso and in that movement’s remote and Haydenesque setting in the flat supertonic key of F-sharp major.

A tangible link with the Double Concerto, incidentally, is to be found in the transition theme of the sonata’s first movement, which could almost be regarded as the concerto’s slow-movement theme set at a different melodic angle.

But the superb coup just before the movement’s end – this time a purely harmonic device that transmutes the last, literal restatement of the stirring subordinate theme into a tender valediction – is a stroke of genius that is all the sonata’s own.

TRACK LISTING:

Johannes Brahms – Sonata For Cello And Piano No. 1 In E Minor, Op. 38

Allegro non troppo – 14:43
Allegretto quasi Menuetto – 5:58
Allegro – 6:37

Johannes Brahms – Sonata For Cello And Piano No. 2 In F Major, Op. 99

Allegro vivace – 9:22
Adagio affettuoso – 7:45
Allegro passionato – 7:20
Allegro molto – 4:32:

FINAL THOUGHT:

Imagine you’re a cellist and a pianist and you’re trying to do some Brahms in your spare time and then freakin’ Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax come out and just stick the landing like it’s never been stuck before. That’s this recording!

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

March 10, 2018March 11, 2023

Brahms – Five Trios – Volume 1

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Five Trios – Volume 1

Op. 8 in B Major

Op. 40 in E-Flat Major

Produced: Ward Botsford

Golub-Kaplan-Carr Trio

David Jolley – Horn

Recorded at Concordia College – February 16, 17, 18 & 25, 1989

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

Jesus F-ing Christ, it’s chamber music by Brahms played by world-class musicians – is there a negative? NO!

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (Dr. Joseph Braunstein, 1989):

Brahms And The Trio

Reviewing Brahms’ piano trios in the context of his oeuvre it is instructive to compare his relevant output with Beethoven’s. Beethoven began his official compositional activity with the set of three piano trios published as Op. 1.

They were actually not his first, for he had composed two trios in Bonn before. Hidden in Vienna, they surfaced only after his death and were never included in practical editions through almost two centuries.

Beethoven’s first piano trios originated before 1792 and his last, the Trio in B-flat, Op. 97, was composed around 1811-12, though published in 1816. To be sure he wrote a piece for piano, violin and cello probably around 1816 which was published in 1824 as Op. 121a.

This opus number is chronologically misleading. These are variations for a trio ensemble, not a standard trio in several movements. Evidently no circumstances occurred to prompt Beethoven to create a piano trio in his last decade of his life.

The case of Brahms is different. He had destroyed the works written in his youth. We do know whether a piano trio was among them. His first work of this category, the Trio in B Major, Op. 8 is the achievement of an accomplished composer who had three piano sonatas but no chamber music piece to his credit so far.

In contrast to Beethoven, Brahms assigned the piano an extraordinarily communicative role in his chamber music throughout his life. Op. 8 was written in 1854 when he was twenty-one, while the Trio in A Minor, Op. 114 was composed in 1891, six years before his death at the age of sixty-four.

TRIO IN B MAJOR, OP. 8

Brahms sketched the Trio in B Major in the summer of 1853 when he journeyed on foot, with a walking staff and knapsack, along the Rhine from Gottingen to Hanover. Completed in 1854 it was published in Leipzig in November 1854. There were two private readings in Dusseldorf, one at the home of Clara Schumann with Brahms at the piano and Joseph Joachim on the violin.

The first public hearing occurred on November 27, 1855 at Dodworth Hall in New York. The performers were William Mason (1829-1908), a pupil of Moscheles and Liszt; Theodore Thomas (1835-1905), later conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; and Carl Bergmann (1821-1876) who became conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Trio in B Major is a unique creation in view of the key and the architectural dimensions of its original shape. The choice of the very seldom used key of B Major justifies a brief note. Not counting the short Preludes and Fugues in B Major of the Well Tempered Clavier, where the key of B Major was a foregone conclusion because of the didactic concept of the work, no large-scale composition, sonata, suite or concerto in B major by Bach, Carl Philippe Emmanuel Bach nor Handel exists. (Domenico Scarlatti’s K. 245, 246, 261 and 262 in B Major are not works in several movements.)

There are no sonatas, chamber music or orchestral compositions by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven in B Major, Schubert broke the spell in his Piano Sonata in B Major, D 575, composed in 1817, published about 1844, which may have come to Brahms’ attention. The key of B major does not appear in larger works of Mendelssohn and Schumann either. Thus the trio of Brahms was the first important composition in B major without have B major successors of consequence.

This Trio constitutes a unique case within Brahms’ oeuvre because of its length. Brahms was fond of the Trio, yet in the course of time had second thoughts about it. At a performance in Vienna in 1871, he insisted on a substantial cut in the first movement. Finally, he decided on a thorough revision which received its public try-out in Budapest in December 1889 with Brahms at the piano, the Hungarian violinist Jeno Hubay, and the cellist David Popper.

In composing the B Major Trio, Brahms had taken as a point of departure Schubert’s trios, which are of symphonic proportion. So is Brahms’ piece whose measure total of 1628 exceeds that of all his instrumental works. To give a drastic example the Third Symphony is “only” 839 measures long. Thus the reworking resulted in a considerable shortening.

Numerically the “New Edition” (Neue Ausgabe), as Brahms called the recomposed work, is 458 measures shorter and the contents are considerably different. The Trio was a creation of Brahms’ youth, while the revision represents the result of deliberations of a composer whose position in music history was definitely established.

The Neue Ausgabe is essentially a new composition, the retained Scherzo notwithstanding, and we know that Brahms enjoyed it as such. Thus the retained ops number 8 is misleading and the opus number 111 applied to the String Quintet in G Major of 1891 would be more appropriate chronologically. Between the Trio of 1854 and that of 1891 stands most of Brahms’ entire creative life.

The principal idea of the first movement (Allegro con brio, 4/4, cut time) not only generates the Scherzo idea which, incidentally, reappears in the last movement of the “Horn Trio” but occurs slightly altered in the “March of the Dead” in the German Requiem and in the finale of the First Symphony. Substantial cuts and the omission of the fugal passage were made to the movement to achieve a tightly organized structure.

The quick Scherzo (Allegro molto, B Minor, 3/4), displaying minor-major dichotomy, was generally left intact except for the conclusion. The transparency and the deft coda in particular reveal the distinct Mendelssohn touch.

The Adagio (B Major, 4/4) underwent drastic changes. There was, strangely enough, a two measure quotation from Schubert’s song Am Meer serving as the second theme, the excision of which Brahms deemed necessary and justly so. The Adagio quality was seriously impaired by an Allegro portion of more than 60 measures. This passage removed, the movement closes quietly and gently. The tender lyricism of the Adagio is sharply contrasted with the Finale in B Minor (Allegro, 4/4).

The puzzling abandonment of the basic key B Major is partly made good, however, by the introduction of a new beautiful melody which first enters in D Major and reappears in B Major in the recapitulation. Yet B Minor prevails in the vigorous coda.

TRIO FOR PIANO, VIOLIN, AND HORN IN E-FLAT, OP. 40

Brahms composed this Trio, colloquially referred to as the “Horn Trio,” in May 1868 in Lichvental, a suburb of the well-known spa Baden-Baden. There he occupied a little place with a charming view of the country, its wooded hills and nearby forests which he used to roam. He was still suffering from the death of his mother who had passed away in February of that year.

For the unusual combination of piano, violin and horn Brahms had no model. These were the instruments he played in his boyhood. For this trio, Brahms thought of the so-called natural horn, colloquially referred to as Waldhorn (foresthorn) and actually used this term for the publication of the work.

The instrument was familiar to German audiences from the overtures to Der Freischultz and Oberon, and the Notturno in Mendelssohn’s music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the hunting scene at the close of the first act of Tannhauser where waldhorns sound in abundance. Siegfried’s horncall was then still ten years away.

Chromatic notes which the overtone series lacks could not be produced “naturally” on the waldhorn. The invention of the valve mechanism corrected the deficiency, but Wagner contended in the preface to the score of Tristan und Isolde that the technical improvement brought about “an undeniable loss of the beauty of its tone.”

That was correct for the 1850s and 1860s and the composer of Tristan even reckoned with the unavoidable improvement of the valve horn. Brahms would probably not find fault with the instruments and the delivery of his melodies by the players of our time. Thanks to modern technology the valves of horns are now greatly improved over their placement in the crude valved instruments of Brahms’ day.

While Brahms’ first trio was unusual because of its key and large dimension, the second occupies a special position on account of the scoring and the structure of the first movement (Andante, 2/4). This is not the customary sonata movement but a rondo-like five-section piece in which the division in 2/4 and 9/8 (poco piu animato) and the modified first section comprise the coda.

Lyricism is the keynote which is sharply contrasted with the vigorously racing Scherzo, a companion piece to the Scherzo of the B Major Trio. The Scherzo theme which foreshadows the principal ideas of the finale includes the ancient Gregorian Gloria intonation.

The slower Trio (Molto meno Allegro) is in the key of A-Flat Minor (seven flats) which, of course, causes intonation difficulties for the violinist. They are not mitigated in the following Adagio mesto in E-Flat Minor (6/8). This is a lament in memory of Brahms’ mother. The sorrowful mood turns passionate before the mild ending.

The Finale (Allegro con brio, 6/8) is a true movement a la chasse. The speedy motion in which the horn like the waldhorn of yore lustily participates is kept up throughout. At the request of the publisher Simrock, Brahms edited version in which the horn part was transposed for violin and cello respectively. He recognized the sales possibility. The Trio was dear to Brahms for happy (Lichtental) and sad memories and he was very grateful to those players who performed their part on the natural horn.

THE NEW YORK TIMES ON THE SCHUBERT TRIOS

“Golub, Kaplan and Carr play with great finesse. Their carefully thought out and brilliantly executed interpretations are thoroughly convincing… The artists have gone back to the original manuscript of the Op. 100, restored the pre-publication cut, and recorded both versions of the finale, so that the listener can program the compact disc either way.”

On both side of the Atlantic, the Golub/Kaplain/Carr Trio has been acclaimed as one of the finest piano trios before the public today. Robert C. Marsh of the Chicago Sun-Times hailed their performance as “… bursting with genius. I cannot recall an occasion in which this music was played with such complete conviction.” The Trio has toured throughout the United States and Europe in major centers including New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Washington, London and Paris.

Their electrifying performance in Washington D.C. lead the Washington Post critic to write, “When musicians with international renown as soloists join forces, one awaits, sometimes fruitlessly, a revelatory performance that lives up to the individual talents. Yesterday proved that such a blending is not a pipe dream.”

They have also appeared to great critical acclaim with many major orchestras, performing the well-known and beloved Beethoven Triple Concerto.

David Galub, Mark Kaplan and Colin Carr are celebrated solo artists, with performances throughout the world at leading music festivals including Ravinia, Blossom, Spoleto and Marlboro, and with orchestras of Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Cleveland, London, Berlin and Montreal.

One of his generation’s most notable and acclaimed horn players, David Jolley has brought his remarkable virtuosity to audiences in the United States and Europe as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician, as well as a versatile and highly respected recording artist.

TRACK LISTING:

Johannes Brahms – Trio In B Major, Op. 8 For Violin, Cello and Piano

Movement 1 [Allegro con brio) 13:45
Movement 2 [Scherzo – allegro molto] 6:20
Movement 3 [Adagio] 8:38
Movement 4 [Allegro] 6:04

Johannes Brahms – Horn Trio in E-Flat Major, Op. 40 for Horn, Violin and Piano

Movement 1 [Andante] 9:46
Movement 2 [Scherzo – Allegro] 7:46
Movement 3 [Adagio mesto] 8:27
Movement 4 [Finale – Allegro con brio] 6:02

https://youtu.be/x0-eerJgqZI

https://youtu.be/ORvvsRawgDo

FINAL THOUGHT:

Chamber music writing at its finest. Schubert – I know, I got your Schubert right here – but Goddamned, Brahms is the freakin’ man. That horn trio? Come on, seriously?!

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

November 11, 2016June 23, 2021

Brahms – Piano Sonata No. 3, Opus 5 (Emanuel Ax)

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Piano Sonata No. 3 in F Minor, Opus 5

3 Intermezzi, Opus 117

Emanuel Ax, Piano

Recording Location: Henry Wood Hall, London, 1989

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

Emanuel Ax sort of knows what he’s doing… and he’s also sort of a master of liner notes (see below):

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (By Emanuel Ax):

“I felt certain an individual would suddenly emerge fated to give expression to the times in the highest and most ideal manner, who would achieve mastery not step by step, but at once, springing like Minerva fully armed from the head of Jove. And now here he is, a young man at whose cradle graces and heroes stood watch. His name is Johannes Brahms…”

This was Schumann’s greeting to the twenty-year-old composer who had so impressed both Clara and Robert with his mastery. He had already played movements of his first two piano sonatas for Joseph Joachim, who was equally overwhelmed by the music’s “undreamt-of-originality and power” and by Brahm’s equally mesmerizing playing.

Brahm’s education create the two sides of his nature that make his music unique, personal, and virtually instantly recognizable. His music teacher Edouard Marxsen – an accomplished musician who valued Classical form and logical structure – strongly encouraged Johannes’ interest in composition, as well as accomplishment in virtuoso piano playing.

At the same time, the Romantic movement in literature swept the young man off his feet (he called himself Johannes Kreisler, Junior, after E.T.A. Hoffmann’s mad violinist-hero, and kept a notebook of literary quotations which he named “Young Kreisler’s Treasure”).

This tug between structural balance and Romantic excess delineates one of the cardinal trademarks of Brahm’s music. The other ubiquitous element is rhythmic complexity, especially as exemplified in the hemiola.

Marxsen was instrumental in working with Johannes to strengthen his left-hand independence and sense of cross-rhythm. The contrast of two-against-three and various multiples of this relationship – so integral to Brahm’s dramatic pulse – represents a rhythmic counterpart to the emotional tug of excess and control. The feeling of inevitability in the large structure is always accompanied by a sense of turmoil underneath.

The Sonata No. 3, Opus 5, is unusual for Brahms in two respects: he cast the work in five movements (although one could almost make a case for doing the last three without pause, as part of one large structure); and, at Brahms’ request, a quotation from Sternau was included in the published version at the beginning of the second movement:

Der Abend dammert, das Mondlicht scheint,

Da sind zwei Herzen in Liebe Vereint,

Und halten sich selig umfangen.

(Night falls and the moon shines,

Two loving hearts are united,

Embracing each other blissfully.)

This evocative and touching phrase shows the influence of Romantic literature on Brahms – so striking considering his usual distaste for ascribing literary allusions to his music.

The piece must have been virtually finished by the time Brahms was twenty and had met the Schumanns for the first time – the second and third movements of the work, in fact, were premiered as a unit by Clara Schumann in a concert in Leipzig in 1854: the first performance of the whole Sonata occurred at a musicale in Magdeburg by Hermann Richter.

As usual, Brahms tinkered with the work for a long time, and, also as usual, we have only the final product, along with letters which tell Joachim that he had “substantially altered” the Sonata, and again, that he must “severely review the Sonata, especially the Finale.”

In any case, the final product has become one of the glories of the pianist’s repertoire.

The first movement – Allegro maestoso – isremarkable for its combination of breadth and intensity (in a letter from 1856, Brahms remarked: “NB, It would have been better to mark the first movement Moderato“). The outer limits of the instruments are immediately established in the first five measures; the next episode, with the muted pyramid of hemiolas (cross-rhythms), will act as an animating force throughout the Sonata. There is a remarkable economy of thematic material, as the first theme, the second theme, and, in fact, the transitional material between the two all share the same leap of the fourth.

The second movement, with the Sternau superscription, progresses from the intimate, yearning first theme to the even more hushed and intimate interlude in the sub-dominant which then becomes transformed into a coda of great ecstasy.

Once again, economy of thematic material combines with mastery of form and a prodigious invention to produce the most spontaneous-seeming, sublime effect. The last arpeggio of the movement appears to demand a continuation directly into the passion of the Scherzo, which abruptly breaks the rapturous stillness.

(The Scherzo perhaps testifies to Brahms’ familiarity with the Mendelssohn Piano Trio in C Minor; the theme is a note-for-note quotation of the Trio’s last movement; and Brahms’ C-Minor Piano Quartet seems to owe much of its last movement to the same Trio’s first.)

The Intermezzo, a true intermission – subtitled “Reminiscence” (Ruckblick), goes back to the love theme of the Andante, but this time in the minor mode; one feels very much a sense of loss and desolation.

Its conclusion speaks of tragedy, and the Finale emerges from it almost reluctantly – the pauses and fermatas have the function of a recitative-introduction, and it is an absolute masterstroke that Brahms also makes this quasi-improvisatory rumination the actual theme of the Rondo. With each repetition of the material it becomes stronger, until finally the entire series of hesitations resolves in an accelerated coda. The feeling is one of bursting the bonds which have held “the young eagle” (as Schumann called him) in check, and the final flight to freedom.

The Three Intermezzi, Opus 117, also start with a superscription: the words “Schlaf Sanft, mein Kind” (Sleep, sleep, my child) from a Scottish lullaby. The mood of peace and intimacy of the first gives way in the second and third Intermezzi to ever increasing darkness and despair.

These pieces and, in fact, almost all of the late piano works are more directed toward the individual than toward the audience. Joan Chisell, in her book on Brahms, very plausibly suggests that Brahms’ piano writing in his later years was motivated by the increasing frailty of Clara Schumann, who was so intimately associated with all his creations for the piano. The dimensions, outwardly, have become smaller, but the inner dimensions are greater than ever before – the density of emotion and intellectual stimulation is as great in these works as in anything Brahms or, for that matter, anyone ever penned.

TRACK LISTING:

Piano Sonata No. 3 in F Minor, Opus 5

Allegro maestoso [10:36]
Andante [10:44]
Scherzo [4:36]
Intermezzo [3:44]
Finale [7:52]

3 Intermezzi, Opus 117

No. 1 in E-flat Major [4:39]
No. 2 in B-flat Minor [4:32]
No. 3 in C-sharp Minor [6:10]

FINAL THOUGHT:

Just a great recording from one of the great master interpreters of Brahms in history. I couldn’t find a video of him playing it (the link above is over Emanuel Ax playing the 3rd movement in audio only) but here is a great classic performance in by Claudio Arrau from Santiago, Chile in 1984 (though it completely looks like the 1960s).

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

June 15, 2013June 23, 2021

Beethoven – Symphony No 3 – Eroica

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Opus 55 – ‘Eroica’

The Academy Of Ancient Music (Christopher Hogwood, Conductor)

Recorded at Walhamstow Assembly Hall, London – August, 1985

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

Even though this symphony, I think, is most effective when performed with the best modern instruments money can buy, this “authentic instrument” recording (thanks, Sir Hogwood) is the standard bearer and generation after generation will forever have this fabulous recording to know exactly how this masterpiece sounded in Beethoven’s day (provided the orchestras in Beethoven’s day didn’t suck).

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (written by Barry Cooper):

Although Beethoven was born and brought up in Bonn, he moved to Vienna in 1792, at the age of nearly 22. Once there, he quickly became recognized as a virtuoso pianist, and he also become wildly admired for his remarkable ability at improvisation.

His reputation as a composer, however, developed more slowly, and until the end of the century his compositions found favor with only a small number of people. But two works did more than anything to broaden his popularity – the Septet Opus 20 of 1799-1800 and the ballet Die Geschopfe des Prometheus (The Creatures of Prometheus) of 1801.

The Prometheus music was to play an important role in the genesis of the Eroica Symphony of 1803, and so an understanding of the ballet and its background is essential for a full appreciate of the Symphony. Ballet in Vienna had reached new heights during the 1790s, with several being produced each year; many were new, with music by such composers as Sussmayr, Weigl and Wranitzky, and most were labelled as belonging to a particular type, such as comic, heroic or tragi-pantomime.

Beethoven’s Prometheus, first performed on 28 March 1801, formed part of this tradition and was described as a ‘heroic allegorical’ ballet (notice the word ‘heroic’).

The work was so successful that it received twenty-three performances in less than two years. The finale appears to have been particularly popular, and Beethoven soon took advantage by arranging the two main finale themes as Contretanze for use at balls (it is sometimes stated that the Contreanze preceded the ballet, but the sketches indicate that ballet undoubtedly came first).

In 1802, he used the principal finale theme again, this time for a set of piano variations Opus 35; he even requested the original publishers to mention on the title page that the them was from Prometheus, though his request was ignored.

As soon as he had finished sketching these variations, he wrote on the next two page of his sketchbook a plan for the first three movements of a symphony in E-flat – a plan that was to evolve into the Eroica Symphony.

The fact that there are no sketches for the finale at this initial stage suggests he had already decided to base this movement on the popular theme from Prometheus,; thus the Eroica became the fourth work to use this theme.

During the next few months, the planned Symphony lay dormant, but Beethoven returned to it in the middle of 1803. He worked intensively on it throughout the summer, as usual composing the movements in the same order as they appear in the finished version.

By autumn 1803, the Symphony was more or less complete, but he continued touching it up for at least a year or so afterwards and it was not finally published until October 1806.

The Eroica or ‘Heroic’ Symphony was the first of his symphonies to have specific extra-musical associations. But although he doubtless expected the musical reference to his heroic ballet to be instantly recognized by the Viennese public, Prometheus was not the only hero he had in mind.

According to one account, General Abercromby (who had been killed in action in 1801) was the hero was provided the initial idea for the Symphony.

More significantly, Beethoven intended to dedicate the work to Napoleon, whom he regarded as the hero who had overthrown the tyranny of the Anicen Regime. He had even written out a dedicatory title page, when news reached Vienna that Napoleon had proclaimed himself emperor.

In a fit of rage, Beethoven is reported to have torn up the page, exclaiming, “Is he too nothing more than an ordinary man? Now he too will trample on all human rights.”

In a manuscript copy of the Symphony which he possessed and which still survives today, Napoleon’s name on the title page is so heavily deleted that there is a hole in the paper.

In the end, the Symphony was dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz, who not only paid Beethoven for the dedication but also enabled him to try out the Symphony several times at the prince’s palace before its first public performance on 7 April 1805.

The work is thus best regarded as a portrayal of the idea of heroism rather than of any individual; the title page of the first edition leaves the matter ambiguous, stating that the Symphony was ‘composed to celebrate the memory of a great man’ (‘compsta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grand Uomo’) – either the memory of the Napoleon that was (before he became emperor) or of any great man.

The concept of heroism is portrayed in the music in a number of ways, most conspicuous of which is the size of the work. For Beethoven, a hero was apparently a larger-than-life character, and so the Symphony is substantially bigger than any previous one.

In the first movement it is the gigantic development section in the middle of the movement that best portrays the hero, as it builds up to a climax of ferocious discords, followed by a desolate theme in the woodwind and ultimately the triumphant return of the main theme.

The second movement is headed ‘Marcia funebre’ and alternates between minor and major – between mournful melancholy and noble pathos.

In the third movement, a scherzo and trio, the heroic element appears most clearly in the trio, where a theme of uncommon boldness is played on three horns instead of the usual two, giving a much fuller sound. This theme, like many of the main themes in the Symphony, is based on the notes of the tonic chord, a device that contributes much to the heroic quality of the music.

(Some analysts suggest these tonic-chord themes are derived from the two opening chords of the Symphony, but the sketches show that these two chords were very much an afterthought.)

In most earlier symphonies the finale was a relatively light movement, but the Eroica marks the beginning of a trend towards much weightier finales. This is hardly surprising when one remembers that the main themes of the Eroica finale was an important generating factor for the whole Symphony.

Beethoven did not specify any programme in the finale, but it is tempting to see the movement as reflecting the plot of Prometheus. The ballet begins with a storm, and similarly the finale of the Eroica has a stormy opening; next Prometheus encounters two statues he has made, and in the Symphony the stiff, unharmonized bass-line that follows the storm could hardly be more statuesque.

Prometheus brings the statues to life, and Beethoven likewise breathes life into the empty bass-line by adding various counterpoints, culminating in the addition of the tune borrowed from his ballet.

In the rest of the ballet the now living statues are introduced to various arts, while the remainder of the Symphony Beethoven proceeds to use a great variety of musical arts, including variation, fugue and symphonic development.

The meaning of the ‘allegorical ballet’ is this: Prometheus is a lofty spirit who finds the men of his day in a state of ignorance and civilizes them, making them susceptible to human passions by the power of harmony. Thus it concerns the creative artist, a hero who breathes life into his creations and civilizes those around him. This idea can also be discerned in the gradeur of the Eroica, where the real hero is surely the composer.

It is of course possible to appreciate the Eroica while knowing nothing of its connections with Prometheus and Napoleon. But if we are to make progress towards ‘authentic’ listening, which is the logical counterpart of authentic performances, it is essential to be aware that the original audiences would have understood at once the reference to Prometheus in the Eroica, as well as appreciating that the Symphony was breaking new ground.

It is also important to appreciate the genesis of the work – both its musical and extra-musical origins – so that we can approach it from the same angle as the composer. Such attitudes will certainly enhance our enjoyment of the music, and our receptiveness to the ideas that Beethoven was trying to communicate.

TRACK LISTING:

1-4: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major – Opus 55 – ‘Eroica’

FINAL THOUGHT:

Napoleon had to get all cocky and name himself “Emperor” – doesn’t he realize that Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony could have been dedicated to him? What a dumb ass.

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

June 6, 2013June 23, 2021

Beethoven – Symphony No 1 and Symphony No 2

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Symphony No. 1, Opus 21 in C Major

Symphony No. 2, Opus 36 in D Major

Columbia Symphony Orchestra (Bruno Walter, Conductor)

Recorded at American Legion Hall, Hollywood, California, 1959

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

Now we’re getting into the meat – Beethoven Symphonies 1 & 2 – all I can say is Ludwig van is a talented man… the future looks promising.

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES (none):

Another budget disc from CBS Masterworks. They couldn’t even afford liner notes. But here’s a bit of info from our friends at Wikipedia:

SYMPHONY NO. 1

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21, was dedicated to Baron Gottfried van Swieten, an early patron of the composer. The piece was published in 1801 by Hoffmeister & Kühnel of Leipzig. It is unknown exactly when Beethoven finished writing this work, but sketches of the finale were found from 1795.

The symphony is clearly indebted to Beethoven’s predecessors, particularly his teacher Joseph Haydn as well as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but nonetheless has characteristics that mark it uniquely as Beethoven’s work, notably the frequent use of sforzandi and the prominent, more independent use of wind instruments.

Sketches for the finale are found among the exercises Beethoven wrote while studying counterpoint under Johann Georg Albrechtsberger in the spring of 1787.

The premiere took place on April 2, 1800 at the K.K. Hoftheater nächst der Burg in Vienna.

The concert program also included his Septet and Piano Concerto No. 2, as well as a symphony by Mozart, and an aria and a duet from Haydn’s oratorio The Creation. This concert effectively served to announce Beethoven’s talents to Vienna.

SYMPHONY NO. 2

Symphony No. 2 in D major (Op. 36) is a symphony in four movements written by Ludwig van Beethoven between 1801 and 1802. The work is dedicated to Karl Alois, Prince Lichnowsky.

The Second Symphony was mostly written during Beethoven’s stay at Heiligenstadt in 1802, at which time his deafness was becoming more apparent and he began to realize that it might be incurable.

The work was premiered in the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 5 April 1803, and was conducted by the composer. During that same concert, the Third Piano Concerto and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives were also debuted. It is one of the last works of Beethoven’s so-called “early period”.

Beethoven wrote the Second Symphony without a standard minuet; instead, a scherzo took its place, giving the composition even greater scope and energy. The scherzo and the finale are filled with vulgar Beethovenian musical jokes, which shocked the sensibilities of many contemporary critics.

One Viennese critic for the Zeitung fuer die elegante Welt (Newspaper for the Elegant World) famously wrote of the Symphony that it was “a hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to die, but writhing in its last agonies and, in the fourth movement, bleeding to death.”

TRACK LISTING:

1-4: Symphony No. 1, Opus 21 in C Major
5-8: Symphony No. 2, Opus 36 in D Major

FINAL THOUGHT:

Regardless of what Wikipedia, above, says – I think Symphony No. 1 is clearly a “Beethoven” symphony” and not as indebted to his predecessors (unless we’re talking about length) as others may believe. And no matter how many times I listen to Symphony No. 2, I just don’t get the “hideously writhing, wounded dragon…” It’s just not that violent (but I’m sure that joke killed at the Biergarten after the concert).

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

May 22, 2013June 23, 2021

Beethoven – Violin Concerto – Opus 61

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 61

Josef Suk, Violin – New Philharmonia Orchestra (Sr. Adrian Boult, Conductor)

Romance No. 1 in G Major, Opus 40

Romance No. 2 in F Major, Opus 50

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’s Violin 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.

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