Something easy for today. After I get into the habit of doing this I'll start branching out.
I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Presto in moto perpetuo
this concerto was written/published in 1939 on commission by this industrialist named Fels and originally was to be performed by one of Barber's Curtis classmates, a violinist named briselli. the entire complicated history of its composition is readable on the wiki page in much more detail than i care to discuss. we'll just note here that briselli rejected the premiere of the work because in his opinion, the last movement needed to be heftier. it's only about 3-4 minutes long (there is somewhat of a competition about how short one can make's one's recording of this movement, which hilary hahn has pretty much dominated thus far at a handy 3:24 and 216 bpm which is actually as fast as my metronome goes. i can't remember the original metronome marking, but it's well below 200... wtf).
because of this work's relative simplicity it's kind of difficult to only do one movement unless i'm planning on doing a formal analysis, so here is anne akiko meyers's recording of the whole thing.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-171252879226640654#
(for some reason blogger doesn't have a tool for inserting google videos into blogposts, only youtube videos. what?)
i really like this recording, btw, although maybe that's just because of the mounds of student ones i had to wade through to find it. she is a very, very aggressive player sometimes, so i find her climaxes fantastic, especially the one in her first movement. but i guess sometimes she doesn't quite achieve the lightness that i am searching for, for instance in the second sixteenth-note subject in the first movement.
here also is the first movement of gil shaham's, which i have to say is probably one of the only recordings he does that i genuinely like.
most of shaham's stuff leaves me sort of unfulfilled, and maybe his last movement of this concerto also falls into that category. but it's a very sweet recording of a very sweet and pretty simple concerto.
most discussions of this work just point out that this is generally a great example of the sort of "popularism" that was emblematic of these couple decades in American classical composition - the same sort that copland, weill, and a lot of others engaged in during this time. gibson is pretty much correct when he says that it was idiotic of the violinist to reject the concerto, which "just about screams, 'i am going to be one of the most popular violin concertos in history, and i will make your career.' " with like a thousand student recordings of it on youtube, who can really argue? it's no wonder that the songful nature of the first movement have made it a favorite among violinists. with listeners, though, it's actually probably the last movement which really impresses. brief though it is, it's the only really virtuosic thing of the concerto, and i once attended a concert in which the audience probably would not have given more than two ovations if not for the finale (you could feel the dampness in the air after the second movement...)
it's a good leadin to the discussion of popularism during this period of america's compositional history but i'm not really in the mood, so i'll just say that it is so accessible in its structure and yet very sophisticated in its harmonies (uniquely barber - lots of major seconds imposed on fifths and the like), that it's hard to "feel bad" about liking it. i think the fact that it's such a favorite among violinists is very telling.
i will also mention that the second movement is actually by far my favorite. get a load of the augmented tenths. also the oboe solo at the beginning (brahms anyone?)
it's actually a little hard to see how the piece hangs together. the melodies are so clear, so simplistic, it's a bit hard to see how anything in the first movement is reflected in the latter two movements. but as i was working on this piece a few years back i held onto exactly one moment in each movement that seemed to tie the movements together - near the end of each movement (in the cadenza section for the first and second movement, and somewhere in the second half of the third, though i may just be dreaming about this one and it is probably a coincidence) there is an attention-getting two-octave thing.
anyway it's a great bit of fun to play. i can blabber about it for a while, but i'd rather just go listen to the second movement, bye!
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