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1 CD -
0630-13137-2 - (p) 1997
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Johannes
Brahms (1833-1897) |
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Concerto for Violin and
Orchestra in D major, Op. 77 |
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36' 49" |
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- Allegro non troppo (Cadenza:
George Enescu) |
21' 01" |
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1
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- Adagio |
8' 13" |
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2
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- Allegro giocoso, ma non
troppo vivace |
7' 35" |
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3
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Concerto for Violin,
Violoncello and Orchestra in A minor,
Op. 102 |
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32' 19" |
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- Allegro
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17' 30" |
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4
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- Andante
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6' 06" |
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5
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- Vivace non troppo |
8' 43" |
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6
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Gidon
Kremer, Violin |
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Clemens
Hagen, Violoncello |
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Royal
Concertgebouw Orchestra |
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Nikolaus
Harnoncourt, Dirigent |
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Luogo
e data di registrazione
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Het
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam (Olanda) -
marzo 1996 (Op. 77), aprile 1997 (Op.
102) |
Registrazione
live / studio
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live |
Producer
/ Engineer
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Wolfgang
Mohr / Helmut Mühle / Michael Brammann
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Prima Edizione CD
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Teldec
- 0630-13137-2 - (1 cd) - 69' 21" - (p)
1997 - DDD |
Prima
Edizione LP
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Two very
different concertos for Joseph
Joachim
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“Look at
virtually any picture of
Brahms and you see a fat man,"
he says. "Of course, I carft
say how mach that influences
your way of approaching
his music, but too often
Brahms is played in a rather
'fat' fashion. One forgets
that inside this ample person
was a very fragile soul, and
yer it can be diffcult
to transfer from what seems
like mere physical weight to
fragility warmth and
striving after the inexpressible.
Brahms is too often considered
a sort of throned
monument, looking dawn on the
romantic world; a mighty
academician, the heavyweight champion
of composing." Gidon
Kremer
"I feel
that the musical language of
the Double Concerto rnakes it
clear that Brahms conceived it
as a gesture of sympathy and
reconciliation between him and
his musician friend. This idea
offers a very interesting
basis for an interpretation,
since dialogue is such a
fundamental element,
especially in a double
concerto. I have found ideal
partners for this conversation
in Nikolaus Harnoncourt and
Gidon Krerner. With its
important cello part, the work
stirs a craving for more. I
shall always regret that
Brahms didn't
write a 'genuine' cello
roncerto." Clemens Hagen
----------
Johannes
Brahms’s violin works are
closely connected to his
friendship with Joseph Joachim,
the leading violin virtuoso of
his time. Just as Brahms
submitted many of his piano
works to Clara Schumann for her
criticism and suggestions, so
did he take the advice of his
friend Joachim with regard to
violin pieces, the more so as he
did not play the violin himself.
Brahms composed the Violin
Concerto op. 77 in the idyllic
town of Pörtschach
on the Wörthersee
in the summer of 1878 and
presented it to Joachim for his
evaluation. The intensive
exchanges that ensued resulted
in the elimination of the second
and third movements, which were
replaced by the Adagio we know
today. Brahms thus turned an
originally four-movement
concerto into a three-movement
one. The work was dedicated to Joseph
Joachim and premièred in Leipzig
on 1 January
1879 with
the dedicatee as soloist and the
composer conducting. In spite of
frequently voiced objections to
the work’s purportedly overly
symphonic and insufficiently
violinistic character, this
concerto quickly conquered the
world’s concert halls and is
part of every great violinist's
repertoire today. Bronislaw
Huberman was even able to claim
the particular privilege of
having moved Brahms to tears
with his playing as a
l3-year-old prodigy.
Brahms ultimately left the
cadenza entirely up to his
friend Joachim. Although this is
the one that is generally played
today, other cadenzas have been
written for this work by
renowned violinists such as
Leopold Auer and Fritz Kreisler, and even by
the piano virtuoso Ferruccio
Busoni. In
this recording, Gidon Kremer
plays the cadenza written in 1903 by George
Enescu. In 1894,
when he was 13,
Enescu met Brahms in Vienna and
played at the third desk of the
violins in a performance of
Brahms's
First Symphony conducted by the
composer. The Romanian violinist
and composer taught Yehudi
Menuhin, among others, and many
of his works are now being
performed for the first time in
many years, such as the opera Oedipe
or the Impressions
d'enfance
op. 28
for violin and piano, which
Gldon Kremer recently recorded
for Teldec.
The first movement of Brahms’s Violin
Concerto makes it clear that the
solo violin is merely one
instrument among many, albeit an
important one. It is delicately
interwoven into the orchestral
texture and alternates between playing the
melodic lead and the
accompaniment. Its
first entrance is preceded by a
tranquil theme in the low
strings and winds which acquires
a spatial dimension through its
descending and ascending triadic
melody before ending on the
dominant. The music is propelled
forward by canonic entries and
syncopations, and spun out in a
delicate chamber-style writing
until it reaches the contrasting
second theme with its sharply
accented dotted sixteenth notes.
Now, at last, the solo violin is
allowed to make its entrance
with exuberant figurations
before it, too, takes up the
main theme. The tendency to
treat the solo violin as a
primus inter pares is even more
pronounced in the slow movement.
Pablo de Sarasate allegedly said
that he would not even think of
listening to the oboe play the
only melody in the piece while
he just stood there, idly
holding his violin. The movement
begins with a songful oboe melody
accompanied solely by the
woodwinds. The solo violin also
states the melody, but "only" in
an embellished version. This
tripartite movement is
predominantly placid, though its
middle section is harmonically
quite bold. The violin describes
melodically and rhythmically
polished arches and pours forth
an almost inexhaustible, endless
flow of melody.
As in a
number of other finales in
Brahms’s works, the last
movement of the concerto evokes
Hungarian folk music, but in a
way that defies a precise
identification with any specific
models. Hungarian-sounding musical
traits are frequent in the 19th
century and can be found in
Johann Strauß's Die
Fledermaus as well as in
works by Franz Liszt. However,
research conducted in the 20th
century, especially by Bartók and Kodály, has shown
that the topos of Hungarian folk
music actually has its roots in
the music of nomadic gypsies. In
Brahms's Violin Concerto, the
melody in thirds, the cimbalon
accompaniment suggested in the
strings and the downward-leaping
syncopation can be identified as
“Hungarian” musical
characteristics. The solo violin
has a more pronounced role here
than in the preceding movements
and keeps rushing forward to
take the lead with the rousing
main therne. However, here too
the symphonically differentiated
orchestral writing and the
lyrical points of rest within
the surging flow of the rondo
show that Brahms was aiming to
produce more than simply a
folkloric
effect.
Brahms’s last orchestral work,
the Concerto for Violin,
\/ioloncello and Orchestra op. 102, is even
more closely connected with
Joseph Joachim than the Violin
Concerto, not only in a musical
sense, but also with respect to
the personal relationship
between the two artists and
friends. Their friendship had
cooled considerably after Brahms
took the side of Joachim's wife Amalie
in a marital dispute between the
couple. Both Brahms's biographer
Max Kalbeck and Clara Schumann
interpreted the work as an
attempt to restore the
friendship. Clara wrote in her
diary: "It
is a thoroughly original work.
This concerto is, in a sense, a
gesture of reconciliation -
Joachim and Brahms have spoken
to each other again for the
first time in years."
Written in Thun in 1887, the
concerto was premièred at
Cologne's Gürzenich
Hall on 18
October 1887
with Joachim and the cellist
Robert Hausmann playing under
Brahms’s direction. The
composer's wish for
reconciliation was apparently
fulfilled. Although Brahms's
relationship with Joachim was the
outward occasion
for the work, it is also
reflected in the composition
itself. It
is more than plausible to see
the two friends in the interplay
of the solo instruments and to
interpret the duet in thirds in
the epilogue of the last
movement as a final peacemaking.
Brahms even alludes to his
friend in the notes of the theme
by quoting the motto F-A-E in
the main theme of the first
movement. This
is the motto Joachim
had chosen for his own life and
which both friends shared:
“Frei, aber einsam" (free but
lonely). Brahms never married and, after an
ill-fated love affair and his
intense closeness to Clara
Schumann, he gave up all hope
ofa lasting relationship. In a
letter written in l887, the year
he composed the Double Concerto,
Brahms wrote: "I
need absolute solitude not only
in order to accomplish what I am
capable of, but basically in
order to think at all about my
own affairs. That is part of my
nature, but is also easy to explain... Whoever,
like
myself, enjoys life and art
beyond that of his own making is
only too tempted to enjoy both - and to forget other
things. Perhaps it is also the
brightest and most correct thing
to do. But now that a large new work looms before me.
I am really quite happy about it
and must tell myself: I would
never have written it if I had
been enjoyng myself so
wonderfully on the Rhine and in
Berchtesgaden."
There are different versions of
some solo passages, which
suggest the influence of Joachim's
proposals. Certain passages from
hitherto
unpublished
versions have been selected for this
recording.
More so
than the Violin Concerto, the
Double Concerto unfolds a
chamber-music texture over broad
stretches. This also results
from the importance attributed to the
two soloists, who yield to the
orchestra only 60 of the 340
bars of the
last movement. Ensuing from his
own experience
as a pianist and chamber
musician, Brahms’s
concept requires the musicians - soloists and
orchestra - to interpret all the
subtle shadings
and to listen
very carefully
to each other. Brahms thus wrote
two concertos
for the virtuoso Joseph Joachim
in which the soloist was
required to fulfill a completely different
role from that which was
expected from
a concerto soloist in the 19th century. No
wonder that even the critic
Eduard Hanslick, an avowed
friend of Brahrns, maintained
certain reservations about the
work. Fortunately, history has
proven him wrong.
Andreas Richter
Translation:
Roger Clement
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Nikolaus
Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
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