Rondomania: A quick hit at violin-concerto rondo finales looking back from Mendelssohn to Mozart and Beethoven and ahead to Brahms and Sibelius

UPDATED with assorted touches here and there and at the end some promises of some "Mozart Rondo Bonuses" to come -- and maybe some other goodies.

FRIDAY UPDATE: Hey, what about the Dvořák Violin Concerto? Well, especially since we're focused on rondo finales, Dvořák needs to be here -- has anybody used the form better? (Note, by the way, how closely bunched in time the Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Dvořák concertos are. Isn't this kind of amazing?)

rondo  n.  Music.  A composition having a principal theme that occurs at least three times in its original key between contrasting subordinate themes.

-- The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language, 3rd ed., 1992

by Ken

No, Mozart didn't invent either the rondo (as we know it from the Classical era) or the idea of plunking it into emerging Classical sonata-form forms, let alone the idea of making it the standard way of rounding out the shape of the emerging Classical concerto. In the 1770s, it was just in the air. And if there's one thing that Mozart, growing out of adolescence into young adulthood, was alert to, it was what was in the air music-wise.

We know that he was interested early on in this newfangled kind of concerto that was coming into being. Goodness knows there'd been a ton of concertos in the now-passed Baroque era, but the burgeoning Classical world was developing something significantly different, and the 19-year-old Mozart had a good idea that he could do something with it.


MOZART SURE FIGURED OUT FAST WHAT THE RONDO COULD COULD DO FOR HIM -- AND HE COULD DO FOR THE RONDO

Which is why we're going to start our rondomania quick hit with the binge of concerto-writing Mozart did in 1775. As I mentioned in this week's main post (or, rather, main pre-post: "(Maybe one more little pre-post?) No, these 14 bars aren't The Most Beautiful Music Ever Written; they're what comes right after it"), these audio files were ready to go, and I'm putting them up in raw form so they'll be available for listening. And once the raw form is posted, I can listen to them too, and who knows? Maybe I'll figure out something to say about them.

[NOTE: While I don't usually include dates in composition listings, I've done so here since our vantage point here is the Mendelssohn E minor Violin Concerto and the place of its rondo finale in the line of the landmark violin concertos.]

(Maybe one more little pre-post?)No, these 14 bars aren't The Most Beautiful Music Ever Written; they're what comes right after it

Yes, we're still in "sidebar" mode from the Nov.28 post,
"One Sunday afternoon in August 1943 in Carnegie Hall"

We've already had a sidebar prompted by the opening work on that 1943 New York Philharmonic "Summer Broadcast Concert" program conducted by Fritz Reiner, the Overture to Dmitri Kabalevsky's opera Colas Breugnon ("Fun with Dmitri Kabalevsky," Dec. 5), in which we heard delicious compact concertos for violin, cello, and piano played by, respectively, David Oistrakh, Daniel Shafran, and Emil Gilels, with the composer conducting. And on Dec. 12 we edged forward with a "Pre-post to the upcoming post, 'Sidebars: (2) Mendelssohn and (4) More Mendelssohn'" -- mostly inspired by the second work on the August 1943 program, the Mendelssohn E minor Violin Concerto, which we heard in a recording made by Columbia in 1945 with the 1943 soloist, Nathan Milstein, rejoining the Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall, this time conducted by Bruno Walter. -- Ken

We have 8 performances by 4 violinists (from fastest to slowest):

[1] April 1944, violinist = age 43

[2] February 1959, violinist = age 58

[3] April 1935, violinist = age 60

[4] May 1945, violinist = age 41

[5] October 1949, violinist = age 41

[6] December 1955, violinist = age 47

[7] March 1973, violinist = age 69

[8] December 1926, violinist = age 51


by Ken

What we see and hear above is a mere 14 bars of music, music I'd heard, oh, probably a million times before it suddenly lodged in my head and wouldn't shake loose. As suggested in the post title, it follows immediately some music that's quite special to me -- music that in fact once did pretty much the same thing to me, back when I'd only heard it maybe a half-million times. But that at least was a whole movement, albeit not a terribly long one. Still, this is only a snippety 14 for-gosh-sakes bars.

So what I've done is gather these eight performances by four well-known violinists of the past, all long gone now -- the last survivor from the group left us in December 1992, and from this remove in time they probably all seem impossibly, even ridiculously ancient. Yet there are distinctions to be made. The oldest of them was a full 26 years older than the next-oldest. In fact, exactly 26 years older, as they shared a birthday, and I think it's fair to say that each was in turn the most famous violinist of his time. In fact, the older led the cheering for the wizardly upstart who had arrived to displace him.

The age gap matters. I think you'll instantly hear a stylistic difference between him and the younger men, who were born within an eight-year period of each other. And there's not just an age difference. One of our chaps hailed from Vienna, the other three from what we might call borderlands of the Soviet empire -- one from Lithuania, the other two from Ukraine (both from Odessa, actually).

The performances, you'll note, are arranged from fastest to slowest, though I can't claim scientific precision for my clip-making or -measuring. The three performances in the 46-47-second range can be considered a dead heat, for example. But note the gap between the two fastest peformances and the others, and for that matter between the slowest one and the others.

When we resume, we're going to have our eight perfomances again, this time all properly identified. And then we're going to call on our fiddlers four to answer the question these 14 hallowed bars so powerfully prompt.

Pre-post to the upcoming post, "Sidebars: (2) Mendelssohn and (4) More Mendelssohn" -- in our series "One Sunday afternoon in August 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . . "

MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: Without quite intending it, I wound up giving this "pre-post" an overhaul, especially as regards the sequence of Mendelssohn excerpts at the end, which I'd assembled before posting with a speed that startled me, but at the expense of proper consideration of its explanatory requirements. I think we're way better prepared now to proceed to the post that this pre-post is supposed to set up. I just have to produce it. -- Ken

Columbia Masterworks' ML 4001 (1948), "the first classical long-playing record, and the first 12" LP of any kind" (per Wikipedia), was a rerelease of the May 1945 recording -- issued on 78s the year it was made -- of the Mendelssohn Concerto by Nathan Milstein, Bruno Walter, and the New York Philharmonic, which we first heard two weeks ago as a substitute for Milstein's August 1943 NY Phil broadcast performance with Fritz Reiner.

i. Allegro molto passionato
ii. Andante [at 11:06]
iii. Allegretto non troppo -- Allegro molto vivace [at 18:58]


Nathan Milstein, violin; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia, recorded in Carnegie Hall, May 16, 1945

by Ken

To catch up: We're enmeshed in a series of posts with the overall title "One Sunday afternoon in August 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . . ," which began on Nov. 28 with "Part 1: The concert." Part 2 was originally intended to present a series of "sidebars" to the concert post, which unfortunately turned out to be not amenable to single-post containment. As some readers will recall, the concert in question, by the New York Philharmonic under Fritz Reiner, on August 15, 1943, comprised three works: the Overture to Dmitiri Kabalevsky's first opera, Colas Breugnon; the Mendelssohn E minor Vioiin Concerto, with soloist Nathan Milstein; and the Shostakovich Sixth Symphony.

Last week we got as far as the Colas Breugnon sidebar, "(1) Fun with Dmitri Kabalevsky." (And even that post, I have to own, remains incomplete as of this writring. I haven't yet gotten to the promised follow-up insert music and performance thoughts prompted by the composer-conducted recordings we heard of Kabalevsky's Opp. 48-50: concertos for, respectively, violin, cello (No. 1, of two), and piano (No. 3, of four).

Which brings us to this week's installment, still under construction, with the working title "Sidebars: (2) Mendelssohn and (4) More Mendelssohn," leaving us still with one sidebar to come, "Sidebar (3)," which will take off from our hearing, in the Nov. 28 re-creation of the August 1943 concert, of the actual broadcast performance of the Shostakovich symphony, the work in which I was principally interested when I originally set us off on this post path. (At right we see again, from the New York Philharmonic Digital Archives, the Shostakovich Sixth score Leonard Bernstein marked up, which we can even digitally thumb through, for his 1963 Philharmonic performances and Columbia recording.)


IN OUR 1943 CONCERT RE-CREATION, THE ONLY
PERFORMANCE WE HEARD FROM THE CONCERT --

'Sidebars' begin for last week's post, 'One Sunday afternoon in August 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . . ': (1) Fun with Dmitri Kabalevsky

NOTE: As you'll see when we get to the gap, this is a knowingly "to be filled in" post, which gives us a chance to do, as it were, some on-our-own listening together

Kabalevsky (1904-1987) at work

-- from the Carnegie Hall program for Sunday, August 15, 1943

KABALEVSKY: Colas Breugnon, Opp. 24/90:
Overture


Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. Columbia, recorded in the Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh, Mar. 26, 1945

Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, cond. RCA, recorded in Orchestra Hall, Mar. 14, 1959

by Ken

If you were here last week for the post in question, "One Sunday afternoon in August 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . ." [Nov. 28], you know that the date was August 15, the event was a New York Philharmonic "Summer Broadcast Concert," and that Fritz Reiner conducted a program consisting of the Overture to Dmitri Kabalevsky's opera Colas Breugnon, the Mendelssohn E minor Violin Concerto with Nathan Milstein as soloist, and the Shostakovich Sixth Symphony. And you know that we re-created the event after a fashion, though with the actual performance of the Shostakovich symphony that went out over the airwaves that day.

For the Kabalevsky overture we heard the recording we've just reherard above, which Reiner made a year and a half later, once Columbia Records made its peace with the striking musicians' union, with "his" orchestra at that time, the Pittsburgh Symphony. And for the Mendelssohn concerto we heard a 1945 performance when Milstein returned to Carnegie Hall to play and record the piece with Bruno Walter conducting the Philharmonic.

One other thing you may know from last week's post and the "pre-post" that preceded it, "Can we do a better job assembling the three movements of this symphony than, you know, the guy who composed them?" [Nov. 22], my main interest was the Shostakovich Sixth, of which we've also heard, in addition to the 1943 New York performance, a recording of the symphony that made in that flurry of activity when Reiner and the Pittsburgh Symphony were finally able to resume recording. In fact, the Colas Breugnon Overture was recorded as a filler for Side 8 of the four-78 set containing the Shostakovich Sixth.


IF YOU'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE, IT WON'T SHOCK YOU THAT
LAST WEEK'S POST PULLED MY MIND IN OTHER DIRECTIONS