Brahms: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 - III. Allegro giocoso, ma no troppo vivace

there are some words that simply carry more heft when you see them in a tempo marking, and "giocoso" is definitely one of them. this is the only movement which is actually inclined towards virtuosic display.

milstein video for your viewing pleasure.

this is pretty standard rondo form, or sonata-rondo form if you prefer. A section those jolly double stops at the opening; this will be the refrain.

0:58 B section - crazy arpeggios, slurred, spiccato, followed by ascending octaves. this first time it hints the entire time at A major, though it never actually resolves into it. the refrain of the A section comes at 2:12.

2:27 transition begins to a C section which starts proper at about 2:48. this is more lyrical, though no less technical for it. this section starts to feel a bit developmental; the lyrical theme is taken into several key areas, revving up around 3:30 and dovetailing into the ascending octaves from the B section right at 3:43. this a bit of a recap; the B section is now in a different key and cadences in D.

an F-sharp minor statement of the A section brings us up to speed for a lead-up to a cadenza section which includes thrilling ascending chords and octave leaps.

5:18 is a remarkable section - completely new material, fresh and songlike, very much Bach-inspired. this only lasts a short while though, before a series of trills ramps it up again and brings it to the dominant chord needed to set up a short cadenza full of arpeggios.

6:31 the final statement of the main theme except now in a galloping 6/8. this adds a romping quality which is broken briefly by a section of virtuosic play on the latter half of that theme, only to return to the triplet rhythms and loud orchestral tutti descending arpeggios leading us to the wrong place a couple times (note the weird e-flat major chord at 7:15) allowing for just a bit more play on the original theme before a final declamatory statement of brilliance in the 6/8 rhythm, which sets off the coda at 7:28. from there on the movement seems to wind down before finally throwing the last surprise, three triumphant chords to finish.

Brahms: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 - II. Adagio

sarasate famously refused to play this concerto because he did not want to stand idly by while the oboe played the "only tune" in the second movement. but what a tune! and it's not as if the violin doesn't get to play it.

heifetz/reiner.
soloist enters at 2:14 with a variation on the oboe's melody. it is a simple melody, and the violin part merely adds endless ornamentations onto it.
a shift at around 3:08 has us landing in the faraway key of g-flat major. this is the beginning of a development which is really more like a rhapsodic interlude; a passionate outburst at 3:50 brings out a whole new melody which is angst-filled and reaches new heights of melancholy which are explored in the rest of this middle section. this middle section is characterized by seemingly aimless meandering by the violin part alternating with returns of the passion demonstrated at 3:50. the violin part gets ever higher until the shimmering high d at 5:13. after reaching this apex, all holds still for just a moment, and then violin begins a set of downward octaves which is actually the recap: you can hear the oboe playing an abbreviated version of the exposition melody as the violin descends.
he winds up this melody to a more passionate climax this time: building it up beginning around 6:08, he uses the horn to nudge the violin up to ever-higher heights, until it ends on a high C and, after holding the harmony almost unbearably, has no choice but to wind down.

the coda is short and quiet, but listen to the diminished d chord that pops out of nowhere at 7:47 to intensify the final V7-I cadence.

Brahms: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 - I. Allegro non troppo

ok for me blogging this piece is a monumental task because of the status it claims in my personal musical tastes. i am quite sorely tempted to merely post up several different recordings from youtube and compare them as a violinist, but as i will be learning it this summer from a conductor's perspective, i shall try to take a more musicological tack on it.

brahms wrote very few concerti: two piano, one violin, and one violin/cello. unfortunately he never got around to writing the cello concerto which we brahms aficionados will always long for. but this violin concerto, written in 1878, is definitely one of the greatest of the greatest.

it's very difficult and (despite lots of input from his friend joachim) not especially violinistic, and most folks attribute this to the fact that he was a pianist by nature and perhaps not as capable of writing idiomatic stuff as, say, wieniawski (who actually called this concerto "unplayable." his violin concerti are ridiculously difficult as well, but very much in the violin idiom). but the counterargument goes that he wasn't trying to produce a virtuoso showpiece (which IS what wieniawski specialized in), but rather a symphonic concerto, which is supported by the fact that originally he had wanted there to be a fourth movement (a scherzo as third movement). apparently his original two middle movements both "fell through," but he instead "substituted a feeble adagio," what we know of as his second movement. anyway, when you remember this "symphonic" characterization, think of his second piano concerto, which he completed three years later in 1881.

there is absolutely no doubt that there are at least ten fantastic recordings by the best violinists on youtube, so pick your favorite. this is milstein/jochum, 1975, totally stunning, not often heard.

the fact that this concerto was in so many ways an homage to beethoven is evidenced mainly in this first movement, with the long, long orchestral introduction which actually goes quite a ways into developmental material before circling back and allowing the violin to enter, at around 2:37.
the first subject, the rising third followed by the falling triad, is moved around until finally the violin is able to play it with the full songfulness it deserves, at 4:05. even then, the violin continues winding its way up and down arpeggios, sixths, thirds, around and over the actual melody in a very brahmsian way.
one program note writer says that there are two "markers" which provide some structural decipherability: one is the descending woodwind fourths at 6:10, which herald the entrance of the more feminine, lovely second subject. this is given in a major/minor, with the transformative modulation being quite subtle and under the radar - actually for a while the second subject sounds like it is still in d. the second subject includes a very typical brahms hemiola at 6:59, followed by a very mournful descent into a reflective lament which seems to bring the music to a standstill.
this is abruptly interrupted by the second "marker," the more aggressive, dramatic chords at 7:49. this brings the music back to its original turbulent opening (of the violin solo), and concludes the exposition, in the dominant key.

the development is all over the tonal map as usual. it opens with a bit of new material - dark, mournful chords, which soon evolve into flighty series of halfsteps, followed by aggressive trills and a very dramatic section in which wide intervals are split all over the fingerboard. an orchestral crescendo builds into a huge d major cadence at 1:32 of the second vid. this is the recap, though it doesn't act like one; actually you can hear the horns trumpeting the main theme behind all the strings' arpeggiating sixteenths. but it dovetails into material exactly from the exposition, 1:56 being analogous to 4:44 of the first vid, except now in d minor. he goes on to state the rest of the first theme as well as all of the second in the correct key, leading us up to the cadenza spot.

the coda after the cadenza is one of my favorite two minutes in all of music. it starts off dreamily, allowing the orchestra to just sneak back in hovering after the cadenza, but as the harmonic and dynamic intensity increase and the violin's arpeggios get up into the stratosphere there are some truly sublime moments, especially the one that finally brings it over the edge into a celebratory set of chords (that is incidentally probably the most difficult section in the entire movement outside the cadenza...)

enjoy!

Moszkowski: Suite in G minor for Two Violins & Piano, Op. 71

i'm only going to do one entry for this suite because i feel one can get to know it pretty well without any formal introduction to every movement. 

moszkowski was a german composer of polish descent, and his nationality is somewhat of a debate. unfortunately he's not too well known today but he did some nice writing mostly for piano. he lived from 1854-1925 and was probably one of the most respected pianist-composers after chopin and liszt. too, a lot of his stuff sounds sort of like chopin plus, harmonically speaking. it's a bit crunchier and chromatic, but has very similar flourish and pianistic elements.

the poor guy resisted mightily the changes brought about by schoenberg, scriabin, and debussy. in that sense, he was born quite after his time.

this is a fun, fairly tasteful little violin duet i discovered last week. it was written in 1902. it has four movements.

I. allegro energico

II. allegro moderato

III. lento assai

IV. molto vivace

this performance is decent, but there are certainly recordings out there which bring out the virtuosity and color better. this is a bit soupy for my tastes. i'll just post the first movement, and if you are interested enough to catch the rest then the links are provided for you above.

probably my favorite part is just the opening. i enjoy how it sounds like there are more instruments because of the double stops. it's a dramatic theme, and reminds me quite a lot of one other famous violin duet, the ysaye sonata for two violins. it is pretty predictable, down to the modulation and cadence in B-flat major.

second theme comes in at about 0:58, very reasonably in b-flat major as well. it's lighter, sunnier, but no less melodramatic.

development starts at about 2:10, with the second theme coming back in D major instead of b-flat. then we begin a pretty typical sequence of shifting keys which indicate a development. there are some fakeout moments, like what sounds like a sort of elided recap at 2:53, which makes it sounds like they're going to go back into the themes this time in the correct key of G. but instead of going into the second theme in that key it sinks a bit further than we expect, with the expected tonic of G turning into the third of an e-flat chord.

there is also a sort of fake ending at 3:37 ish, but we are still in e-flat, so this is clearly not the end. we go onto a sort of suspended state which hovers for a bit before ascending up and turning into some d octaves which serve as the dominant lead-in for the real recap at 4:14.

the recap is really short and is pretty much actually a coda for the g minor ending.

the second movement is sort of understated and lovely, with a very romantic spin on what could be a classical theme (well, until the keys start shifting around anyway). there is also a cool little burst of tarantelle-like energy 1:21 of the recording which melts quickly away.

the third movement is real romantic writing, what sounds like an elegy or song without words. and the fourth movement is a fast little gallop of fun. it's altogether quite a cute piece, and i'm kind of surprised that it doesn't get played more often by students and the like.

this duet was almost immediately made into a piano trio (a more popular and balanced ensemble) to make it more accessible to perform and program. but this is the version which it was originally conceived for.

Chausson: Poème, for violin and orchestra, Op.25

welcome to month 2 of music blob 365. i totally forgot about this yesterday for some reason, i guess it was because i left the apartment at 8:30 and didn't come back until after 11. ok anyway that is material for the other blog.

chausson was born in 1855 and died in 1899 apparently as the result of a freak accident involving his bicycle and a brick wall (no joke). a trained lawyer, his heart wasn't really in the law so he composed, but never really took off, though he was a big member of the artistic community at this point, playing host to such luminaries as debussy, franck, mallarme, turgenev, and monet. it was cool how back then all the artists in paris just associated naturally with each other.
he wrote only 39 opuses, influenced by wagner, franck, and his teacher, massenet. this composition was written in 1896 during the last years of his life, a period in which he was influenced by russian literature/symbolism. this was one of only three orchestral works he published, the others being a symphony in b minor and a "poem of love and the sea," a song cycle for voice and orchestra. this piece was requested by his friend eugene ysaye.

okay frustratingly enough i actually can't get blogger's youtube search to return part 2 to either of these great recordings, so just go here for the second part of oistrakh's and here for the second part of menuhin's. there are actually plenty of wonderful recordings of this on youtube. browse at your leisure.

there is some talk of a real life tale of thwarted love which is said to have inspired this work, but it's really not programmatic at all, so i will avoid talking about it.
the work is tempo'ed "lento e misterioso," and revolves centrally around the development of several recurring themes. one, a dark and moody meditation, is played right at the beginning by the solo violin, then echoed in chorale by the orchestra.
the cadenza right at the beginning is absurdly difficult. it's one melody line with accompaniment which is quite difficult to accomplish without interrupting the continuity. oistrakh does this superbly, managing the double lines without neglecting the lengths of notes, distinguishing between quarters and eighths.
then with a series of ascending scales and trills the orchestra enters, and we sense that we are off finally. there is a flighty theme with murmuring triplet accompaniment and lots of augmented small intervals, giving us a sense of harmony that sort of slithers around. (one description of chausson's overall style is that he sort of splits the difference between debussy-style impressionism and juicy romanticism.) at 5:26 we hear for the first time a hemiola/triplet based melody which recurs many many times in both the violin and orchestra parts.
the amazing thing about this piece (and most difficult to make work, as a musician) is the way the line just keeps going. it isn't all one "phrase," but there never seems to be a great conclusion, all the way from the orchestral entrance until the big outcry of passion/ridiculously hard scale (and it doesn't really stop there either).

the subsequent passage is some technically gnarly stuff which basically sends the orchestra off on a grand reprise of the opening theme, so this is sort of like a recap. the violin enters mid-phrase, and we are guided around an altered version of the first couple minutes after the first orchestral entrance. eventually the violin settles into a dark series of ascending trills, which gives us a shadowed ending that seems as if it is about to end in e flat minor, only to turn a page and give us a major chord instead.

Ravel: Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano, M. 77 - I. Allegretto

M stands for marcel marnat, who catalogued ravel's stuff.

this sonata was composed between 1923-1927, and is one of my favorite violin sonatas. friendly and sophisticated at the same time, it seems to have a lot of pull even with non classical listeners.

the reasons for its lengthy complicated birth period were things which plagued ravel from the end of WWI until the end of his life, including recurring illness and a creative block that only left in 1926. as a result the pre-war period for him was several times more productive than the last phase of his life from 1926 until 1937 (fifteen compositions versus fifty-six).

the main program note that usually accompanies this piece regards only the second movement which is noted for having some jazz/blues influence (it's quite unsubtly titled "blues"). this movement is indeed quite special and funky, but for me it's the outer movements which are so compelling.

analyses of ravel's music postwar usually stress his interest in making subtle and not-so-subtle references to the horrors of the war and his wish for it not to be repeated (see piano concerto for the left hand, which was written for the wittgenstein who had his right hand blown off in combat). some of this jazz inspired music is said to be a sort of homage to the american contribution to the war. this sonata is more abstract and seems to fall largely outside the scope of these more programmatic works. but it does reflect a lot of the changes in his musical language which took place directly after the war: "His attitude toward musical texture changes from lush and thick to spare and ascetic; his form names change from colorful to abstract, while his formal shapes turn a bit more unpredictable than heretofore; bitonality, harsh dissonance or unresolved friction, jazz sonorities, folk-like modalities, and all-but-incompatible metric interconnecting relationships increase exponentially in these later works." (this is a very good set of program notes on this piece.)

all of these are readily visible/audible in this violin sonata. it was first performed on may 30, 1927, with georges enesco on the violin and ravel at the piano.
two very different recordings. the first is monique haas at the piano, max rostal at the violin. i like this because of its plainness, which to me seems to adhere very closely to the nature of the work. the second is shlomo mintz and yefim bronfman. i expected this to be sort of lusher but eh.

the movement is meandering and dreamy, lots of asymmetrical phrases and bitonal chords. the meter keeps grounded in 6/8, but everything else seems to slide it around as if it were going to sort of take off any second. the tonality slides around constantly. after the opening theme the violin echoes the piano a fifth above, but then goes somewhere else entirely, from a tonal perspective.

i like how spare this writing is. it's totally clear and one can hear every note, but it boggles our musical instincts by not at all adhering to... well, anything, really. lots of augmented sevenths and ninths, things usually only found in jazz music - but the voicing is still off.
note the little inserted countermelodies starting at 1:11. these come back noticeably in the last movement. that plus the opening theme provide the grounds for the whole movement.
notable is how, while the violin and piano often trade off voicing melodic material, sometimes they go off in completely different directions.
development starts at 3:11.
there's a big climax with triplets in the violin. but the catharsis doesn't really come until quite a bit after that: the part i find most amazing is the "phrase" which begins directly after the triplets stop at 5:52. from then straight until 7:18 is the longest-spinning phrase ever. and it's not until 7:12 that we feel the relief of it ending.

ok, this entry was really difficult to write for some reason. O WELL SEE YOU TOMORROW

Elgar: Salut d'Amour for violin and piano, Op. 12

if you remember those kreisler pieces liebesfreud and liebesleid, this was originally going to be called "liebesgruss," which means the same thing in german - because his betrothed was german-speaking. he wrote this as an engagement gift, in july 1888 when he was 31 (his wife-to-be gave him a poem as her own gift, which he later set to music).

this is early elgar, and reflects a pretty young and optimistic composer, before he began to focus on his own alienation from both higher level music and social circles. he wrote enigma in 1899, which was his first breakthrough. but this is music of a different, simpler, very appealing sort.

here is a very lovely rendition by kyung wha chung.

through the years elgar and others have released many different versions/instrumentations of this piece which is really a song. the violin/piano arrangement is the original.

really very little needs to be explained about this piece :)

Kreisler/Corelli: La Folia for Violin and Piano

doing the daily thing is turning out to be pretty difficult.

for saturday: an arrangement of the famous theme la folia which has been used by over 150 composers throughout history, beginning at least in the 16th century.

d: (i)-V-i-VII-III-VII-i-V-(i)
this is the basic structure, which lends itself to an infinite number of fascinating variations. because the theme itself (and the chord progression) are so interesting, this is one set of theme and variations i find quite compelling.

the milstein below is corelli's own variations on the la folia theme.

enjoy.

Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 - II. Adagio

ok so i'm putting off mozart another day because today is a very special day! and i'm going to commemorate it with some sappy romantic music that everyone already knows :D and today is bruch's birthday, so this is also a pretty good excuse.

bruch wrote this concerto and, unbeknownst to a lot of violinists, two other ones that apparently he thought were just as good (history has not been kind to these other concerti, unfortunately). this first one was composed first in 1866, premiered, and then revised with help from the famous joachim, who premiered that in 1868. and that's the piece we hear today.

i have always felt that the second movement was *far and away* the best of the three movements. from the warm key to the core melody, the majestic arpeggios, the beautiful climax, it's pretty much all there.

ok i wanted to upload the recording i grew up with - isaac stern with ormandy and the philadelphia orchestra. classic, clear, and never overdone. i love it. but unfortunately it's not on youtube and blogger doesn't have audio hosting services. blah. well if you can find it, give it a go. for now we'll go with...

can't really lose here.

i've always felt that this slow movement is great at being melodic without being shrill, even with the alternating a-bflats in the climax. just listen to the beginning of the movement. it is romantic without really being thick, even though sometimes the movement does get a hair repetitive or cheesy with arpeggios, stretched out chromatic passing tones, etc. this is really quite well mitigated by many violinists though, if they can convey the pathos of these moments without necessarily making them excessive, and also if they can find moments other than the obvious ones to deliver on. it is so easy with romantic concerti to fall into a rote interpretation.

there is pretty much no better example of the ability to convey intensity without excess (yeah, he does this weird open d string thing in the second line or so that just sounds strange, but just listen to the length of his phrases...)

ok i really want to kill blogger right now for its fail youtube search which refuses to give me this video among its search options. but you must watch this! you need to turn the volume up because it's set so low on this video, but it's definitely worth it.
Ida Haendel at 77(?) years in 2005
i'm ashamed to admit i didn't even know whether she was still alive, but this video is fascinating. there are a number of orchestral following fails and also fairly common intonation blunders. but this is so amazing by virtue of the fact that she has *so much conviction* it makes me want to back up because of the intensity. i would usually call mistakes in intonation "slips," but after listening to this you will have to agree that nothing she does can be really called a "slip" because through all these 'errors' she is playing with such oomph that you don't even care that the errors are being made anymore. it's like THIS IS THE WAY I'M GONNA DO IT NOW PUT UP OR SHUT UP. lets keep in mind that she's 77, if you or i can play like that at 77 then we can talk about those things.
o my this is so intense.

Dinicu: Hora Staccato

OK, I admit it... i forgot to do the post earlier oops. and now i had to configure email submission bc my postwriter is being slow and retarded. so, here is the most awesome hora staccato you'll ever hear (and watch)!

check out that downbow staccato.

dinicu was a romanian composer/violin virtuoso. he wrote this piece for his own graduation from bucharest conservatory in 1906 and played it there. win!

i promise not to forget tomorrow :(

Barber: Violin Concerto, Op. 14

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!