Four German Gems

I read recently that the nineteenth-century violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim had said something like, “The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven's. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart's jewel, is Mendelssohn's"

I know them, but curiously hardly ever hear them. Why? Well, one of the paradoxes of classical music is that when a piece gets played often enough, it gains “warhorse” status, and people then tend to shun it. Think I’m wrong? When was the last time you heard Beethoven’s fifth symphony?

Of the four concerti, Beethoven’s is the oldest and—some would argue—the best. It’s also fiendishly difficult: the violin has to go into the stratosphere and still be utterly lyrical. It’s therefore almost unbelievable that Beethoven gave the part to the violinist Franz Clement so late that Clement was sight reading (that is, playing it for the first time) at the first performance. That may have been why Clement chose to play a little ditty for one string with his violin held upside down between the first and second movements. In fairness, breaking up movements was a fairly common practice at the time; earlier generations were less fussy at the time.

At any rate, the debut was not a great success, and the concerto went essentially un-played for a couple of decades, when it was revived by a twelve-year old Joachim with Mendelssohn conducting.

It’s a typical concerto—nothing revolutionary here. OK—it’s a little weird to have those four somber timpani notes starting the whole thing, but other than that, it’s fairly traditional. It starts out with the orchestra playing the tutti, which introduces the principal themes, as well as gives the soloist time to feel his dry mouth,his churning gut, and his sweaty palms--all the loveliest feelings of utter terror. Then we get the soloist coming in, and playing a miniature cadenza—a solo passage which is or should feel improvised and which, generally, is highly virtuosic. There’s nothing virtuosic here, it’s mainly meant to tease—when is the violinist gonna get down to business and play us some tunes?

He or she does for about twenty minutes—Beethoven takes his sweet time wrapping this thing up. And the first movement ends with a true, fiery cadenza. The second movement is Beethoven at his most lyric, and the third movement—which is connected to the second, a typical Beethoven trick—is almost fatally a rondo.

A good blogger would look it up, and give you the formula for the damn thing—it goes something like aabbaaccaaddaa and then—at last—the end. So the first problem is that you’re gonna hear the aa six zillion times. The second problem is that the tunes chosen by the composer tend to be mildly irritating at the start, so by the end? You’ll be gagging.

And Beethoven, with all his skill, comes very close to not pulling it off. He has, however, to his aid an incredible violinist, Kyung-wha Chung. Chung has quite a story—her mother was a singer, and two of her siblings are professional musicians as well. So she grew up playing with her cellist sister and pianist brother, and was famous in South Korea, their home. From there, it was off to Julliard, where she had two major challenges—Juilliard was filled with child prodigies as good as she, and her teacher, the famous and feared Ivan Galamian, didn’t think much of female violinists. He thought she’d make an orchestra musician, not a soloist.

He was also teaching a kid named Pinchas Zuckerman, who had the chromosome that Chung lacked. So when Chung wanted to enter the prestigious Edgar Leventritt Violin Competition, she didn’t get much support. Oh, except for her mother, who sold the family home to by a Stradivarius for the event.

She didn’t win—she did something better. She tied with Zuckerman, the first time any two people had been declared winners; some years, no one wins the thing if the judges don’t feel there’s anybody up to snuff.

Zuckerman’s career took off; hers languished. And then, she got a break—Zuckerman’s wife was giving birth, and Chung was asked to step in. She prepared the Tchaikovsky concerto, the orchestra played the Mendelssohn, instead. Right so she could do that—they prep you for stuff like that in Juilliard. She played it perfectly, and the London Symphony Orchestra, which thought she was a lightweight, was impressed.

In the clip below, she’s at the peak of her career, and playing with a wonderful orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, with Klauss Tennstedt as conductor. The orchestra has this wonderful, rich sound; Chung goes from fiery virtuosity to almost unbearable tenderness. It’s a knockout. 

OK—next up.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff in the Mendelssohn violin concerto. For one thing, the violin starts the piece, coming right in with a gorgeous theme that, according to Mendelssohn, “gave me no rest.” Then in the middle—not the end—of the first movement, Mendelssohn wrote out a cadenza—it was unusual at the time for a composer to do so. In addition, all the movements are connected, the first two by a sustained note on the bassoon; between the second and third movements there’s a transition in which the principal theme of the first movement is restated.

Started in 1838, it took Mendelssohn six years to complete the concerto, dedicated to his friend Ferdinand David. Mendelssohn was doing other things at the time, including writing his third symphony, but he was also afflicted with self-doubt.

However much he may have doubted himself, it doesn’t show in the music. And the audience at the premiere had no doubts, either. It was an immediate hit, and even when Mendelssohn’s music went out of fashion (due to anti-Semitism, in part), the concerto has never left the repertory. It’s a popular today as the day it was debuted.

 In the clip below, Kyung-wha Chung again puts in an amazing and virtuosic performance.

Max Bruch has the somewhat melancholy distinction of being known for only three pieces: his violin concerto number one; the Scottish Fantasy, also for violin and orchestra; and Kol Nidre, subtitled Adagio on Hebrew Melodies for Violoncello and Orchestra,for cello and orchestra. Yet according to Wikipedia, he wrote over 200 compositions, and Bruch felt that his last concerto for violin and orchestra was fully as good as his first, which everyone plays and knows.

He was a musical conservative, writing in the time of Schumann and Mendelssohn, not in the style of Liszt or Wagner. And Joachim certainly has it right; the concerto certainly is rich and seductive.

Bruch had a long and illustrious career as a composer, conductor, and especially as a teacher. Knew all that, but I didn’t know the story told below via Wikipedia:

Bruch sold the score to the publisher N. Simrock outright for a small lump sum — but he kept a copy of his own. At the end of World War I, he was destitute, having been unable to enforce the payment of royalties for his other works because of chaotic world-wide economic conditions. He sent his autograph to the duo-pianists Rose and Ottilie Sutro (for whom he had written his Concerto in A flat minor for Two Pianos and Orchestra, Op. 88a, in 1912), so that they could sell it in the United States and send him the money. Bruch died in October 1920, without ever receiving any money. The Sutro sisters decided to keep the score themselves, but they claimed to have sold it, and sent Bruch's family some worthless German paper money as the alleged proceeds of the alleged sale. They always refused to divulge any details of the supposed purchaser. In 1949, they sold the autograph to Mary Flagler Cary, whose collection, including the Bruch concerto, now resides at the Pierpont Morgan Public Library in New York.[3]

Bruch died in 1920, two years after the First World War.

The performance below is given by Akiko Suwanai, a Japanese violinist who is the youngest winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition.

Lastly, there’s the Brahms, and what a concerto it is. First off, let’s admit it—it’s a titanic work, for the violin, for the orchestra, and also for the listener. In fact, one writer described it not as a concerto for the violin, but a concerto against the violin. And it’s true, there are times in the work when the violin seems to be battling the orchestra. You hold your breathe—who’s gonna win?

Here again, Joachim entered the picture—he both advised Brahms (as much as anyone could, Brahms was a bit, well, Brahmsian….) and played the debut. And however much anybody ever pays anyone to play this work, the violinist earns ever cent of it. In fact, the great nineteenth-century virtuoso, Henryk Wieniawski called the work “unplayable.”

Let’s be clear—there are some concerti that have one goal in mind: showcase the soloist. And even though I love the two Chopin piano concerti—to use the example that comes first to mind—I can’t really say that the orchestra does much of anything except support the piano. But Brahms in general, and this concerto in particular, goes to the other extreme; this is a fully musical work, not a vehicle for showcasing an instrument.

Perhaps because of that, the work wasn’t fully accepted. Another nineteenth-century violinist, Pablo Sarasate, stated that he was damned if he was going to "stand on the rostrum, violin in hand and listen to the oboe playing the only tune in the adagio."[8]

The work, originally intended to have four movements, is in three, with the second movement being the aforementioned adagio, which Brahms—famously self-critical, called “feeble.”

And here she is, again, Kyung-wha Chung, older but no less astonishing.

Lastly, it has to be said that South Korea has given us some astonishing singers and musicians. Wait until the next post, when you’ll meet Sarah Chang.