Beethoven Violin Concerto, Program Notes

Brahms, Symphony No. 3
Beethoven, Violin Concerto

Symphony No. 3 in F Major, op. 90 (1883)
Johannes Brahms
Born May 7, 1833 in Hamburg, Germany
Died April 3, 1897 in Vienna, Austria

Allegro con brio
Andante
Poco allegretto
Allegro; Un poco sostenuto

Brahms met violinist Joseph Joachim in 1853 when Joachim was attending the University of Göttingen. Brahms enjoyed 'hanging out' with him, attending some lectures and participating in spirited all-night debates and drinking sessions. The two became life-long friends (despite occasional disagreements) and Brahms wrote some of his best music for Joachim and his string quartet. One subject on which they disagreed was the fate of the romantic artist. Joachim, a family man at heart, viewed the creative life as a conflict between the desire for the comforts of a wife and loving home and the need for artistic independence. He took as his motto the letters "F-A-E" signifying frei aber einsam ("free but lonely.") Brahms, on the other hand, was perfectly happy being on his own. His attitude toward women was admiring but cautious—he didn't want to be tied down, and none of his romances lasted very long. Brahms' counter-motto was the more sanguine frei aber froh ("free but happy") spelled out as "F-A-F."

So, if this was Brahms' attitude, what was the fifty-year-old composer doing falling madly in love with a woman half his age? Hermine Spiess was a contralto who worshipped Brahms' music, especially his songs. Brahms met her in January 1883 and immediately began writing such hot-blooded lieder that his friends noticed and commented on his "midsummer passion." How far the mutual attraction went, we'll never know, but Brahms, who normally spent his summers composing in the Austrian alps, decided to spend the summer of 1883 in Wiesbaden near Hermine. It was there that he completed his Third Symphony, whose opening bars peal out the exultant clarion-call: "F-A-F!"

This short melodic motto (the actual notes Brahms used are F, A-flat, F) permeates the texture of the first movement of the symphony and returns with dramatic power at crucial moments in the later movements. Is the symphony a musical celebration of Brahms' love affair with Hermine? Probably not; but the youthful warmth and passion that overflow through the entire work certainly indicate that he was feeling his oats that summer in Wiesbaden. After its fiery, heroic opening, the first movement explores gentler, more intimate byways, indulging in romantic sighs and a gently swaying second theme in the clarinet. The development section brings an impetuous surge of passion, then subsides into a darker, magically mysterious passage that leads back to the blazing sun of the opening. The second movement's poised melodic grace recalls the genial spirit of Mozart's beautiful wind serenades. The F-A-F motto, now treated lyrically, is woven subtly into the serene fabric of this gentle movement.

In the third movement Brahms departed from the usual robust Haydn/Beethoven-style dance to write a new kind of graceful, lilting inner movement of his own invention that his friend Clara Schumann liked to call an "intermezzo." The sensuous, singing charm of this pensive cello melody is one of Brahms' most romantically beguiling moments. A sweetly wistful central section features the woodwinds, then the opening melody returns luxuriantly in the horn. The critics who called Brahms a cerebral, academic composer must not have listened to this movement. The finale is the dramatic culmination of the symphony, beginning quietly in spectral darkness, then bursting out with rhythmic power to revel in storm clouds and lightning-strokes. Peace is restored in the marvelous coda in which the F-A-F motto returns, and the surging, passionate theme of the symphony's opening bars reappears, now transfigured and serene over shimmering chords that fade to a sunset glow.

Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61 (1806)
Ludwig van Beethoven
Born December 16, 1770 in Bonn-on-Rhine, Germany
Died March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria

Allegro ma non troppo
Larghetto
Allegro

In 1806 Ludwig van Beethoven was on a creative roll that few artists have ever equaled. During the astonishing five-year period from 1804 to 1809 he produced a miraculous torrent of path-breaking masterpieces, and could do no wrong.

Well, almost no wrong. He had an ongoing problem with finishing music on time. He often pulled all-night sessions frantically copying out parts for a performance the next day—the Violin Concerto, for example. He wrote it for Franz Clement, a brilliant violinist whose playing he had admired since he first heard him perform at the age of fourteen. Clement had grown up to become the concertmaster and conductor of the Vienna Opera, and Beethoven had trusted him to conduct the premiere of the Eroica symphony. Now Clement was giving a benefit concert for himself in December of 1806 and he commissioned Beethoven to write a violin concerto.

Beethoven's respect for Clement's musicianship shows in the manuscript score, which contains numerous changes the violinist suggested in the solo part to make it more "violinistic." It was fortunate that Clement collaborated on the music as it was written and had a phenomenal musical memory (he once sat at the keyboard and played the entire score of Fidelio from memory) because Beethoven kept revising the work right up to the day of the concert and Clement had to perform it without a single rehearsal with the orchestra. Although Clement played brilliantly, the orchestra was sight-reading and the performance was less than convincing. It didn't help that Clement (who was something of a showboat) played a sonata of his own between the first and second movements—on one string with the violin held upside down! The reaction of the audience and critics was lukewarm; one critic, noting the five drumbeats in the opening bars, snidely called it "A concerto for kettledrum." The work languished in obscurity for thirty years until another wunderkind, Joseph Joachim, played it in Leipzig at the age of 13 with Felix Mendelssohn conducting and it entered the standard repertoire of every virtuoso violinist. It is now considered one of the greatest concertos in the violin literature.

Beethoven paid Clement the compliment of writing a concerto which demands both technical virtuosity and intelligent musicianship for a successful performance. The first movement is spacious and serene; the five solo timpani-strokes with which Beethoven audaciously begins it play a central role throughout. This simple five-note rhythm permeates almost every bar of the movement. It punctuates the phrases of the tranquil first theme introduced by the woodwinds, is present in the dramatic five-beats-and-silence of the robust transitional theme and the quick five-sixteenth-note patterns that lead into the noble, singing second theme. It is also underpins this theme as an accompanying rhythm in the violins while the woodwinds sing above. Then the brass intone the five notes while the violins transpose the second theme to minor. The solo violin finally enters with a dramatic rhapsodic passage and takes over the musical discourse, running through all the themes again, embroidering them with brilliant threads of violinistic filigree that show the undoubted editorial influence of Clement. The omnipresent five-note motto dominates the development section, appearing again and again in the brass, woodwinds and strings. There is an exquisitely poetic moment as the soloist sings a pensive, melancholy meditation over five-note pulses in the trumpets and horns, then the opening bars return in fortissimo triumph. The soloist usually performs a cadenza by Joachim or Fritz Kreisler to round the movement off.

The lyrical second movement opens with a deceptively simple theme in the muted violins. The solo violin weaves tender garlands of embellishments around the melody as horns, clarinet and bassoon take it up, and a series of beautiful variations follows. The movement ends with a dramatic, quasi-operatic declamation by the orchestra that triggers a brilliant mini-cadenza from the soloist. This leads without pause into the rollicking finale. This is a robust violin-jig on a grand scale, with the soloist leaping nimbly over and around the orchestra in sparkling runs, trills and arpeggios. Again a simple rhythmic motive--this time the falling and rising interval of a fourth that begins the main theme--permeates the fabric of the movement and drives it forward to the final brilliant violin cadenza and the unbuttoned good-humor of the coda.