Download Tchaikovsky Violin Concert0 Feb13-16

Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto – February 13, 2016
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1840–1893
“Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto raises for the first time the ghastly idea that there are pieces
of music that one can hear stinking... [the finale] transports us into the brutish grim jollity of
a Russian church festival. In our mind’s eye we see nothing but common, ravaged faces, hear
rough oaths and smell cheap liquor.” This politically incorrect assessment comes from the
pen of the dean of nineteenth century music critics, Eduard Hanslick, reviewing the
Concerto’s Vienna premiere.
Why did the first performance take place in Vienna and not St. Petersburg? It is difficult to
believe that this Concerto, probably the most popular in the literature, was declared to
contain passages that were “almost impossible to play” by its first dedicatee, the famed
violinist and violin teacher Leopold Auer, concertmaster of the Imperial Orchestra in St.
Petersburg. Completed in 1878, it had to wait for three years for its premiere in Vienna where
Hanslick was not alone in his opinion.
What Hanslick and the other critics disliked most is what makes the Concerto so appealing
today: its athletic energy, unabashed romanticism and rousing Slavic finale. Without
diminishing our own enjoyment of the Concerto, attempting to hear it with the ears of its first
audience is a fascinating exercise in cultural relativity. First of all, consider the sheer
difficulty of the piece. What defeated Russia’s leading violin virtuoso is the stuff teenage
prodigies cut their teeth on at Juilliard and Curtis, practicing the killer bits ad nauseam until
they get them right or find some other career.
Then there’s the fact that there was no love lost between the two great nineteenth-century
imperial behemoths, Russia and Austria-Hungary, who continued to slug it out until the end
of World War I. That Tchaikovsky disliked Johannes Brahms, Hanslick’s favorite composer,
probably also added fuel to the fire.
At the time of the Concerto’s inception, Tchaikovsky was just emerging from under the black
cloud of a disastrous marriage to an emotionally unstable woman who had threatened suicide
if he refused to marry. The marriage was also undertaken to quash rumors about his
homosexuality; it ended two weeks later with his attempted suicide, although they were never
legally divorced. The vibrant energy of the Concerto, however, seems to have been inspired
by the visit of Josif Kotek, a young violinist, pupil and protégé who managed to raise the
composer’s spirits. He helped him with the Concerto, giving advice on technical matters.
The Concerto opens with a brief, gentle introduction, paving the way for the lyrical first
theme. After some virtuosic fireworks, the emerging second theme is surprisingly similar in
mood to the first. The development, full of technical acrobatics, leads into the very difficult
cadenza that the composer wrote himself.
The current slow movement was Tchaikovsky’s second try; he discarded his first attempt,
eventually publishing it separately as a violin and piano piece, Méditation, Op. 42, No. 3.
The second version opens with a gentle melancholy song on the woodwinds that pervades the
movement, serving as sharp contrast to the raucous Finale that follows without pause.
Hanslick’s appraisal: “The adagio with its gentle Slav melancholy [note the stereotyping] is
well on its way to reconciling us and winning us over.”
The unabashed use of Russian peasant dance rhythms in the third movement that so upset
Vienna’s critics was, even at the time, becoming a signature of much Russian orchestral
music and a symbol of Russian nationalism. Another peculiar divergence from tradition that
must have raised a few Viennese eyebrows is the spectacular cadenza at the beginning of the
movement that follows immediately on the fiery orchestral introduction and leads right into
the main theme. Now, if these had been German or Hungarian dances, Vienna’s attitude
might have been different.
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43
Jean Sibelius
1865-1957
Sweden relinquished Finland to the Russian Empire in 1809, where it became an autonomous
duchy with significant control over its own affairs. Beginning in 1870, however, these
privileges were gradually taken away under the program of “Russifying” the many ethnic
minorities within the Russian Empire. While Swedish had been the language of the educated
middle class, Russian repression aroused such strong nationalist feelings that it sparked a
revival of the Finnish language. Jean Sibelius was born into this nationalistic environment
and in 1876 enrolled in the first grammar school to teach in Finnish.
Sibelius was by no means a child prodigy. He started playing piano at nine, didn't like it and
took up the violin at fourteen. His ambition was to become a concert violinist and all his life
he regretted not following his dream. He had also begun toying with composition as early as
ten.
His first success as a composer came in 1892 with Kullervo, Op. 7, a nationalistic symphonic
poem/cantata that met with great success but was never again performed in his lifetime.
During the next six years he composed numerous nationalistic pageants, symphonic poems
and vocal works, mostly based on the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. In order to enable
him to work undisturbed, the Finnish administrative government gave him a pension for life
in 1897. For the next 28 years he composed the symphonies and tone poems that made him
famous. But in 1925, at the age of 60, he essentially abandoned composing probably as the
result of the ravages of alcoholism and the bipolar disorder that had plagued him throughout
his life. He remained silent until his death 32 years later.
Writing symphonies was for Sibelius a lifelong preoccupation that he described as
“confessions of faith from different periods of my life.” Composed in the winter 1901-02,
close on the heels of his patriotic Finlandia, the Symphony No. 2, with its blazingly
affirmative conclusion and optimism, reflected the nationalistic spirit of the time. His
statement that all his music was either consciously or unconsciously programmatic opened up
a Pandora’s box for interpretation. The public’s belief that the Symphony contained a
fundamental political message made it an instant success despite the fact that Sibelius
himself ascribed no program to it.
The first movement opens with a lyrical theme by a pair of oboes in their middle range
accompanied by the lower strings, creating the dark, cold sound characteristic of Sibelius,
which hints at the stark Finnish climate and landscape. The movement consists of a string of
melodic fragments, rather than full themes, woven together into a classic sonata form.
A timpani roll and a long pizzicato passage on the basses open the second movement,
spiraling higher and higher, preparatory to a stark Russian-sounding theme for the bassoons.
It creates an even more desolate sound than the chilly oboes of the first movement. The
ominous mood builds up to an outburst in the strings that has been interpreted as symbolic of
Russian oppression.
The Scherzo for strings alone has a frantic quality about it, particularly in its irregularity of
its phrasing and refusal to settle on a tonic. The pace slows down considerably for the Trio, a
low oboe solo accompanied by winds. While the Trio begins on an emotionally neutral plane
it quickly adopts a plaintive mood that is taken up by the entire orchestra.
The Finale, which to its first audiences symbolized nationalistic triumph, is indeed both
optimistic and grandiose, with heavy use of a trumpet fanfare motive. Like the first
movement, it consists more of freely developed motives than full themes, but they are so
frequently repeated as to be unforgettable even on first hearing.
Program notes by:
Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn
[email protected]
www.wordprosmusic.com