Yes, we're still in "sidebar" mode from the Nov.28 post,
"One Sunday afternoon in August 1943 in Carnegie Hall"
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.
SO HERE ARE OUR EIGHT PERFORMANCES AGAIN,
IN THE SAME ORDER, NOW FULLY IDENTIFIED
[1] Jascha Heifetz, April 1944 (age 43)
Jascha Heifetz, violin; NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, cond. Broadcast performance, Apr. 9, 1944
[2] Jascha Heifetz, February 1959 (age 58)
Jascha Heifetz, violin; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Feb. 23 & 25, 1959
[3] Fritz Kreisler, 1935 (age 60)
Fritz Kreisler, violin; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Landon Ronald, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, Apr. 8, 1935 (transfer by F. Reeder)
[4] Nathan Milstein, May 1945 (age 41)
Nathan Milstein, violin; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia, recorded in Carnegie Hall, May 16, 1945
[5] David Oistrakh, October 1949 (age 41)
David Oistrakh, violin; USSR State Symphony Orchestra, Kirill Kondrashin, cond. Melodiya, recorded Oct. 25, 1949
[6] David Oistrakh, December 1955 (age 47)
David Oistrakh, violin; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia, recorded in the Academy of Music, Dec. 24, 1955
[7] Nathan Milstein, March 1973 (age 69)
Nathan Milstein, violin; Vienna Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado, cond. DG, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Musikverein, Mar. 12-13, 1973
[8] Fritz Kreisler, December 1926 (age 51)
Fritz Kreisler, violin; Staatskapelle Berlin, Leo Blech, cond. EMI, recorded in the Berlin Singakadamie, Dec. 9-10, 1926
It's a given that every major violinist -- and of course every non-major violinist as well -- plays the Mendelssohn E minor Concerto a lot. Right now, for example, I'm sitting on no fewer than five performances by Nathan Milstein, four commercial recordings and a live broadcast from which we're going to hear a chunk in a moment. And I don't even have all of his commercial recordings in hand -- I know there was one before the 1945 Columbia recording with Walter and the New York Phil, with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, which I've never heard. And there must be a dozen more live performances in circulation. You get the feeling N.M. played the thing a lot.
So did Jascha Heifetz, and you'll read occasionally that Heifetz liked to play the piece fast. Of course Heifetz generally gravitated to quicker tempos, which was partly related to his astonishing mastery of the instrument, and his unmatched completeness-of-sound, by which he could pack more and more-complete music into a note of the same duration than anybody else. By and large, there was simply no reason for him to slow down.
I got to know the Beethoven Violin Concerto initially via Heiftz's 1955 RCA stereo recording with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony, and it still seems to me one of the greatest recordings ever made. I was surprised, incidentally, to hear tell that Heifetz and Munch in fact weren't getting along at all, and far from the harmonious, stress-free collaboration I would have imagined, the odd-hours recording sessions were a trial for all concerned. Well, whatever it takes -- it's the result that counts, and, well, wow!!! So imagine my surprise (yes, more surprise!) when I heard people grumble about how fast the performance is. Fast? But it's paced like a dream. I looked at the movement timings, though, and sure enough, they are pretty darned quick. But I'm sorry, I don't hear the performance as fast at all -- Heifetz and Munch deliver more of the content of the music than any other performers I've heard, and trust me, I've heard a lot of really wonderfuly performances of the piece.
All that said, when people tell us that Heifetz liked to play the Mendelssohn Concerto fast, this we have to acknowledge. And in this case I'm not sure he was doing the music or us any favor. Maybe it makes a difference that in this case I didn't grow up listening to Heifetz and Munch playing the Mendelssohn. In these 14 bars the performer's soul is on view to the audience, and I don't think Heifetz particularly wanted his soul on public display. I have no sympathy with the Heifetz naysayers' preposterous claim that his playing was "too objective" or "lacked feeling." This concerto, though, only makes sense to me if the performer is sharing him/herself -- in the way, say, that our Boys from Odessa, Nathan Milstein and David Oistrakh, did so bravely. I love what they do with the Magic 14 Bars. In both cases, it's by no means identical in their paired performances, but in all four cases, it's just so beautiful.
WE NEED TO CLARIFY WHAT OUR "MAGIC 14 BARS" ARE
What we're hearing here is, Formally, these 14 bars are the opening of the finale of the Mendelssohn Concerto. But the boundaries between movements aren't so clear-cut, because Mendelssohn -- as he had done with his two piano concertos -- joined the three movements of this concerto, and our 14-bar "Allegretto non troppo" interlude is clearly crafted as a transition from the great and glorious Andante to the scampering rondo about to break out. And it's attention to these movement linkages that led to my being waylaid by this extaordinary bridge passage
Speaking of breaking out, when I felt a sidebar breaking out of the Mendelssohn concerto from our re-creation of the 1943 Reiner-Philharmonic concert, I would have assumed it would related to the Andante, which you may have noticed in the post title I sort-of-called The Music Beautiful Music Ever Written. I'm frequently tempted to blurt out silly things like this, and I almost always have the sense to pull back from the impulse. Only this time I didn't. Some years ago I wrote a Sunday Classics post about this Andante. It's an exceedingly tricky movement to perform, because it invites performers to try to show audiences how beautiful it is, and to impress on us how deeply moved they are by it, and either of these traps can doom it to treacly sentimentality. It's music of such transcendent beauty that the last thing it needs to do is announce how beautiful it is, or how feeling-full.
In that old post, I remember suggesting that, played and heard right, this movement contains The Answer -- the answer to all questions in the universe. Of course I couldn't actually spell out those questions, and since I can't quite articulate the questions, it seems hardly surprising that I haven't yet worked out what the answers are that are voiced in the Andante of the Mendelssohn E minor Violin Concerto.
All of which we can talk about when we come back to the Andante, as I'm pretty sure we will. But our Magic 14 Bars are leading us the other way, right out of the Andante, and the question I mentioned earlier which I think the magic bars are fairly screaming out in their super-hushed way is:
What the [expletive deleted] happens next?
So let's find out.
IT'S A RONDO!
And I don't think we need to talk much about the way Mendelssohn brings this concerto to its rousing close. I do think we need to do some remediation of the sparse attention given to the great violin-concerto rondos that preceded and followed Mendelssohn's. We're actually going to get a glimpse -- going through the Mozart violin concertos -- of the rondo taking hold as the movement of choice to top off a concerto. The clips are actually done for this, and we could probably have tacked it on, but I'm thinking maybe this is enough for one go. Watch for the Supplementary Rondo Post.
MENDELSSOHN: Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64:
iii. Allegretto non troppo -- Allegro molto vivace
"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.
SO HERE ARE OUR EIGHT PERFORMANCES AGAIN,
IN THE SAME ORDER, NOW FULLY IDENTIFIED
[1] Jascha Heifetz, April 1944 (age 43)
Jascha Heifetz, violin; NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, cond. Broadcast performance, Apr. 9, 1944
[2] Jascha Heifetz, February 1959 (age 58)
Jascha Heifetz, violin; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Feb. 23 & 25, 1959
[3] Fritz Kreisler, 1935 (age 60)
Fritz Kreisler, violin; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Landon Ronald, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, Apr. 8, 1935 (transfer by F. Reeder)
[4] Nathan Milstein, May 1945 (age 41)
Nathan Milstein, violin; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia, recorded in Carnegie Hall, May 16, 1945
[5] David Oistrakh, October 1949 (age 41)
David Oistrakh, violin; USSR State Symphony Orchestra, Kirill Kondrashin, cond. Melodiya, recorded Oct. 25, 1949
[6] David Oistrakh, December 1955 (age 47)
David Oistrakh, violin; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia, recorded in the Academy of Music, Dec. 24, 1955
[7] Nathan Milstein, March 1973 (age 69)
Nathan Milstein, violin; Vienna Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado, cond. DG, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Musikverein, Mar. 12-13, 1973
[8] Fritz Kreisler, December 1926 (age 51)
Fritz Kreisler, violin; Staatskapelle Berlin, Leo Blech, cond. EMI, recorded in the Berlin Singakadamie, Dec. 9-10, 1926
It's a given that every major violinist -- and of course every non-major violinist as well -- plays the Mendelssohn E minor Concerto a lot. Right now, for example, I'm sitting on no fewer than five performances by Nathan Milstein, four commercial recordings and a live broadcast from which we're going to hear a chunk in a moment. And I don't even have all of his commercial recordings in hand -- I know there was one before the 1945 Columbia recording with Walter and the New York Phil, with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, which I've never heard. And there must be a dozen more live performances in circulation. You get the feeling N.M. played the thing a lot.
So did Jascha Heifetz, and you'll read occasionally that Heifetz liked to play the piece fast. Of course Heifetz generally gravitated to quicker tempos, which was partly related to his astonishing mastery of the instrument, and his unmatched completeness-of-sound, by which he could pack more and more-complete music into a note of the same duration than anybody else. By and large, there was simply no reason for him to slow down.
All that said, when people tell us that Heifetz liked to play the Mendelssohn Concerto fast, this we have to acknowledge. And in this case I'm not sure he was doing the music or us any favor. Maybe it makes a difference that in this case I didn't grow up listening to Heifetz and Munch playing the Mendelssohn. In these 14 bars the performer's soul is on view to the audience, and I don't think Heifetz particularly wanted his soul on public display. I have no sympathy with the Heifetz naysayers' preposterous claim that his playing was "too objective" or "lacked feeling." This concerto, though, only makes sense to me if the performer is sharing him/herself -- in the way, say, that our Boys from Odessa, Nathan Milstein and David Oistrakh, did so bravely. I love what they do with the Magic 14 Bars. In both cases, it's by no means identical in their paired performances, but in all four cases, it's just so beautiful.
MONDAY HEIFETZ UPDATE (IF I MAY INTERJECT) --Still, the performance that really thrills me (as if you hadn't guessed) is Fritz Kreisler's 1926 one. Yes, he indulges freely in old-style slidey portamentos. They're never slathered on, though. Instead, they're always deployed as precise expressions of the soloist's understanding and projection of the musical line.
Once this post was posted, and I was able -- just as you are -- to click-for-clips, out of curiosity I listened again to the clips of Heifetz doing the Rondo-setting "Allegretto non troppo." And sure, if you're listening to them in the context of these other great violinists' performances, you sure notice how quickly Heifetz gets through our Magic 14 Bars. But if you're listening fresh, at least when I was listening fresh, what Heifetz does with them is pretty darned gorgeous. Just as I tried to suggest above, when Heifetz takes a quicker-than-other-folks' tempo, he usually doesn't sacrifice the tiniest microgram's worth of musical substance. So yes, I'll continue to listen with pleasure to all these great fiddlers' performances, especially the 1926-vintage Kreisler (see below). At the same time, while in the first two movements of the Mendelssohn Concerto Heifetz still isn't likely to be my first or second choice, his recordings of the piece remain irreplaceable. Heifetz remains Heifetz, a violinist whose like I doubt we ever had before (certainly not in the era of recordings) and doubt we're likely ever to have again. Um, just for the record. -- Ken
WE NEED TO CLARIFY WHAT OUR "MAGIC 14 BARS" ARE
What we're hearing here is, Formally, these 14 bars are the opening of the finale of the Mendelssohn Concerto. But the boundaries between movements aren't so clear-cut, because Mendelssohn -- as he had done with his two piano concertos -- joined the three movements of this concerto, and our 14-bar "Allegretto non troppo" interlude is clearly crafted as a transition from the great and glorious Andante to the scampering rondo about to break out. And it's attention to these movement linkages that led to my being waylaid by this extaordinary bridge passage
Speaking of breaking out, when I felt a sidebar breaking out of the Mendelssohn concerto from our re-creation of the 1943 Reiner-Philharmonic concert, I would have assumed it would related to the Andante, which you may have noticed in the post title I sort-of-called The Music Beautiful Music Ever Written. I'm frequently tempted to blurt out silly things like this, and I almost always have the sense to pull back from the impulse. Only this time I didn't. Some years ago I wrote a Sunday Classics post about this Andante. It's an exceedingly tricky movement to perform, because it invites performers to try to show audiences how beautiful it is, and to impress on us how deeply moved they are by it, and either of these traps can doom it to treacly sentimentality. It's music of such transcendent beauty that the last thing it needs to do is announce how beautiful it is, or how feeling-full.
In that old post, I remember suggesting that, played and heard right, this movement contains The Answer -- the answer to all questions in the universe. Of course I couldn't actually spell out those questions, and since I can't quite articulate the questions, it seems hardly surprising that I haven't yet worked out what the answers are that are voiced in the Andante of the Mendelssohn E minor Violin Concerto.
All of which we can talk about when we come back to the Andante, as I'm pretty sure we will. But our Magic 14 Bars are leading us the other way, right out of the Andante, and the question I mentioned earlier which I think the magic bars are fairly screaming out in their super-hushed way is:
What the [expletive deleted] happens next?
So let's find out.
IT'S A RONDO!
It occurred to me when I went shopping in the SC archive for existing audio clips of rondos from the great violin concertos and found the pickings slim that maybe we don't talk as much about rondo movements as about sonata-form opening movements and the various species of slow movements, I guess because rondos usually seem kind of, well, self-evident. There may be magic aplenty, but the effect of the tricks, if not necessarily how they're done, is usually in plain sight.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
And I don't think we need to talk much about the way Mendelssohn brings this concerto to its rousing close. I do think we need to do some remediation of the sparse attention given to the great violin-concerto rondos that preceded and followed Mendelssohn's. We're actually going to get a glimpse -- going through the Mozart violin concertos -- of the rondo taking hold as the movement of choice to top off a concerto. The clips are actually done for this, and we could probably have tacked it on, but I'm thinking maybe this is enough for one go. Watch for the Supplementary Rondo Post.
MENDELSSOHN: Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64:
iii. Allegretto non troppo -- Allegro molto vivace
FRITZ KREISLER
Born in Vienna, Feb. 2, 1875. Died in New York City, Jan. 29, 1962.
[8] (age 51) Fritz Kreisler, violin; Staatskapelle Berlin, Leo Blech, cond. EMI, recorded in the Berlin Singakadamie, Dec. 9-10, 1926
[3] (age 60) Fritz Kreisler, violin; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Landon Ronald, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, Apr. 8, 1935 (transfer by F. Reeder)
I think we can hear that Kreisler was 60 when he made the later recording (but then, Heifetz was 58 when he made his stereo recording of the Mendelssohn, and Milstein a mind-blowing 69 when he made his last one), and so, despite the superior 1935 sound, my heart sticks with the 1926 performance.
JASCHA HEIFETZ
Born in Vilnius (Lithuania), Feb. 2, 1901. Died in Los Angeles, Dec. 10, 1987.
[1] (age 43) Jascha Heifetz, violin; NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, cond. Broadcast performance, Apr. 9, 1944
[2] (age 58) Jascha Heifetz, violin; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Feb. 23 & 25, 1959
There are rumblings that all wasn't sweetness and light between Heifetz and Toscanini, but then, sweetness and light wasn't either of these guys' stock-in-trade. I somehow can't imagine that Heifetz needed to persuade Toscanini that the Mendelsohn Concerto should be played fast. And certainly this rondo can take the treatment. I don't think the music needs to be taken at these paces to "sound fast" -- by and large, fast music written by competent composers has its "fastness" built in. Nevertheless, it's something to hear what Heifetz can do with this music at this chosen pace -- and still, amazingly, at 58.
NATHAN MILSTEIN
Born in Odessa, Dec. 31, 1903. Died in London, Dec. 21, 1992.
[4] (age 41) Nathan Milstein, violin; New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia, recorded in Carnegie Hall, May 16, 1945
[not previously heard] (age 49) Nathan Milstein, violin; Swiss Festival Orchestra, Igor Markevitch, cond. Live performance from the Lucerne Festival, from the Kunsthaus, Aug. 12, 1953
[7] (age 69) Nathan Milstein, violin; Vienna Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado, cond. DG, recorded in the Grosser Saal of the Vienna Musikverein, Mar. 12-13, 1973
You'll notice that I've slipped in one of those "extra" Milstein performances I mentioned, specifically this live performance from the Lucerne Festival in collaboration with the rarely routine or uninteresting Igor Markevitch, which really is different, darker and more serious in tone, than any of the commercial recordings. This is probably least evident in the Rondo proper, but I think we can hear the difference even here.
DAVID OISTRAKH
Born in Odessa, Sept. 30, 1908. Died in Amsterdam, Oct. 24, 1974.
[5] (age 41) David Oistrakh, violin; USSR State Symphony Orchestra, Kirill Kondrashin, cond. Melodiya, recorded Oct. 25, 1949
[6] (age 47) David Oistrakh, violin; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia, recorded in the Academy of Music, Dec. 24, 1955
IN ADDITION TO
THE HISTORY OF VIOLIN-CONCERTO RONDOS
. . . we still need to backtrack to the Andante of the Mendelssohn E minor Concerto, and for that matter we should do a little listening to and talking about the first movement. We've still got a bunch of elite violinists to hear from in the piece -- folks like Arthur Grumiaux, Isaac Stern, and Josef Suk -- just to throw out the most obvious names.
*MONDAY UPDATE: My goodness gracious, a rough version of the quick rondo-story survey went up this morning. See "Rondomania: A quick hit at violin-concerto rondo finales looking back from Mendelssohn to Mozart and Beethoven and ahead to Brahms and Sibelius (raw version)."
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