"Out-of-body" Beethoven, part 2: Is one of these three string-trio slow movements even more special than the other two?

BEETHOVEN: String Trio in G, Op. 9, No. 1:
ii. Adagio ma non tanto e cantabile (key: E major)

Itzhak Perlman, violin; Pinchas Zukerman, viola; Lynn Harrell, cello. EMI, recorded live at the 92nd Street Y, New York City, June 6-7, 1990

BEETHOVEN: String Trio in D, Op. 9, No. 2:
ii. Andante quasi allegretto (key: D minor)

Itzhak Perlman, violin; Pinchas Zukerman, viola; Lynn Harrell, cello

BEETHOVEN: String Trio in C minor, Op. 9, No. 3:
ii. Adagio con espressione (key: C major)

Itzhak Perlman, violin; Pinchas Zukerman, viola; Lynn Harrell, cello

"[These three] extraordinary slow movements in the key of E major [from the Piano Trio in G, Op. 1, No. 2; the String Trio in G, Op. 9, No. 1; and the String Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2] . . . share an almost out-of-body quality, and it’s inspiring to wonder what this beautiful tonality must have meant to Beethoven."

-- David Finckel, in "Making the most out of chamber music coaching," from The Strad newsletter, Jan. 21, 2025

by Ken

The David Finckel quote, of course, is a pickup from last week's first installment of "'Out-of-body' Beethoven?," wherein we took advantage of this linkage of three Beethoven slow movements in E major, offered as an example of the kind of musical context he can offer to students as part of one of his most enjoyed yet enormously complex activities: coaching chamber music. I thought it would be fun as well as instructive to listen to David F.'s three E major slow movements -- along with two stringless ones I added, from the Op. 90 and Op. 109 Piano Sonatas.

For me there was no question that David F.'s trio of slow movements have something special in common. One thing I wanted to do was listen to what assorted performers have heard in them, to get some idea of how we might think about that special "E major quality." I also wanted to hear those movements in the context of the works they're part of, to get a sense of the kinds of use Beethoven made of that special quality (or qualities). And we're still going to attempt to do both of those things.

I'm still plugging away at that next step. Meanwhile I thought it would be interesting just to set one of those E major movements against alongside some comparable slow movements, which is what we've done above. The G major Trio, Op. 9, No. 1, is part of a set of three, and above we've heard the same performers play the slow movements of all three.

I suspect that for many of us, even the most confirmed Beethoven-philes, the string trios don't figure prominently in our listening. I'm always reminded when I have occasion to return to them (the three trios of Op. 9 were preceded by a six-movement Trio in E-flat, Op. 3, and the five-movement Serenade in D, Op. 8), I'm reminded that they're not only potentially more entertaining but more substantial than I remembered. It's generally pointed out that the trios were in some sense a preparation for the creative force that Beethoven would unleash in the Op. 18 set of six string quartets. Already I think it's fair to say that the three slow movements of Op. 9 are pretty gorgeous.

If the Adagio ma non tanto e cantabile of Op. 9, No. 1 were in E minor, it would be in the parallel minor key of the first movement's G major, but it's not in E minor, it's in E major. (We have this same relationship in the Op. 1, No. 2 Piano Trio.) In the remaining trios the slow movement is in the parallel minor or major of the first. The nervous tension of the D minor of Op. 9, No. 2 is a striking contrast to the D major of the first movement, while the C major of the harmonically ambiguous Adagio con espressione of Op. 9, No. 3 is about as un-C-majory a C major as I can think of.


AS A REMINDER, HERE ARE THE PERFORMANCES WE HEARD OF THE OP. 9, NO. 1 "ADAGIO MA NON TANTO E CANTABILE"

We now hear our "elite" violin concertos in their entirety

As we edge forward with our Mendelssohn "sidebar" -- as I just explained -- it's time to hear these concertos in full.

[TUESDAY UPDATE: You might watch for updates to this post, like the one I just added for the Brahms Concerto.]

Last week ("Rondomania: A quick hit at violin-concerto rondo finales looking back from Mendelssohn to Mozart and Beethoven and ahead to Brahms and Sibelius"), pursuing the Mendelssohn "sidebar" that grew out of the Nov. 28 post "One Sunday afternoon in
August 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . .," we listened to the great chain of violin concertos with rondo finales stretching out before and after Mendelssohn. I said at the time that I'd really like to be able to present those concertos in full. Well, here they are!

This all still needs to be integrated with a mostly written first part that continues the Mendelssohnian thread. And probably it should be improved in all sorts of other ways. I wouldn't hold my breath about that part, though. -- Ken

AGAIN, WE REALLY HAVE TO START WITH MOZART

In our original consideration of the place of the rondo finale in the line of the great violin concertos, we started with Mozart --

• not because he invented either the violin concerto or the rondo or even the use of the rondo in violin (and other) concertos, which he didn't, but because he grasped the possibilities of this combination in a way, or ways, that made it stick.

• and not because Mozart's violin concertos, taken on their own, are equivalent in stature to the line of violin concertos they did so much to inspire. The form -- the Classical concerto, that is, not to be confused with the Baroque one -- was still too new to aspire to that stature. (Thank you once again, Herr Beethoven.)

Not that the three "mature" concertos (which followed with scarcely any separation from the not-yet-mature ones) can't still hold their own on a concert platform. But you kind of feel that the audience needs at minimum a somewhat bigger kick, and the performer has to put out a portion more to earn his/her fee. So, with no disrespect to any of these much-loved works, I'm thinking of them maybe more as a collective than as separate entires in our violin-concerto sweepstakes. (If it were piano concertos we were tracking, I'm not sure I would take the same position. But Mozart's piano concertos come from a more developed stage of his creative energies. There are at least half a dozen Mozart piano concertos I'd consider worthy of inclusion in such a survey.

BUT: We're skipping the Mozart Violin Concertos Nos. 1-2

(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.

Revisiting our musical glimpse into the sublime, Part 1

If what follows looks familiar, these are the performances we heard last week -- except now with the performers identified



Leon Fleisher, piano; Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Epic-CBS-Sony, recorded Mar. 3-4, 1961

Emil Gilels, piano; Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. EMI, recorded Mar.-Apr. 1968

Emil Gilels, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Leopold Ludwig, cond. EMI, recorded Apr. 30-May 1, 1957

by Ken

This was supposed to be a ridiculously easy post, before I let it grow in my head -- as I so often do -- into something larger, and something important enough to me that I despair of being able to get it right.

So just to be clear, while we're on the subject of Beethoven's one and only opera, Fidelio, I interrupted this thread last week to share a piece of music that had come at me from an unexpected direction ("Found Music Dept.: When music that pops into your path grabs hold and won't let go"). It's a piece I know about as well as I know my own name, and yet I don't think I'd ever heard it in quite this way: as a prime example of Beethoven's singular ability to give us a musical glimpse into the sublime.


MAYBE I FELT I HAD TO EXPLAIN WHAT I MEAN
BY "A MUSICAL GLIMPSE INTO THE SUBLIME"

Yet another digression that will be explained (eventually): Revisiting Sir Malcolm Sargent

MIDNIGHT UPDATE: Okay, I think we're just about there. For anyone who's been following along as this post filled out from its original "preliminary version," thanks for your patience and persistence. -- Ed.

It all started when I couldn't resist a too-cheap-to-pass-up copy of this 18-CD EMI set devoted to "The Great Recordings" of Sir Malcolm Sargent (from which some of the music files we're hearing today are drawn).

by Ken

Yes, as it says above, another digression, following upon last week's "'Spurn not the nobly born': No, not the proper post planned for this week, but we do make a little progress, and we hear some really nice music." And yes, we're still enmeshed in Wagner's Die Meistersinger, going back to September 23's "Still on the trail of our two classic Operatic Bad Days, we pause to sniff an elder tree."

In fact over the past week I've gotten enmeshed-er, which is far from an unpleasant thing, except for the expanses of lower-male-voice growling and rasping and grinding one is expected to endure -- and indeed lots of apparent Wagner fans smile and nod, as if this is perfectly normal and acceptable. Yikes! Of course in other Wagner operas the problem becomes even more acute, especially in the higher vocal categories: the heroic soprano and tenor roles (Isolde and Brünnhilde; Tannhäuser, Tristan, Siegmund, and Siegfried).


SO HOW DID SIR MALCOLM SARGENT (1895-1967) OF ALL
PEOPLE BECOME THIS WEEK'S DESIGNATED DIVERSION?

Chausson's "Poème": a gem of French Romanticism

Ernest Chausson (1855-1899), around 1895

Ginette Neveu, violin

David Oistrakh, violin

Zino Francescatti, violin

by Ken

Now that, I dare say, is one gorgeous tune, and a tune gorgeously suited to the solo violin. (One feature worth noting in the tune's formal notation: The accented beats the ear hears hardly ever occur on the downbeats where one would expect them. What seems like such a simple, straightforward flowing melody actually isn't so simple or straightforward.)

As I mentioned last week, when we listened to Ravel's "funny music," the concert rhapsody for violin and orchestra Tzigane, it was actually its frequent disc-mate, Ernest Chausson's Poème for Violin and Orchestra, that actually got me thinking about the pieces, which were both included, with Zino Francescatti as soloist, on a CD in Sony's Leonard Bernstein Edition, filling out Lenny's 1961 New York Philharmonic recording of Berlioz's Harold in Italy (with William Lincer, the orchestra's principal violist from 1942 to 1972, as soloist).


SO THIS WEEK: CHAUSSON'S POÈME

Sunday Classics snapshots: Ravel's "funny music"

The first 18 bars (1:48 in the Heifetz recording, 1:42 in the Francescatti, and
1:56 in the Perlman) of the 58-bar solo that opens Ravel's "funny music"

RAVEL: Tzigane (concert rhapsody for violin and orchestra):
Opening solo

Jascha Heifetz, violin (1953)

Zino Francescatti, violin (1964)

Itzhak Perlman, violin (c1974)

by Ken

No, we haven't by any means finished with our listen-in to Richard Strauss's serio-comic operatic treasure Ariadne auf Naxos -- or to Strauss's Four Last Songs (we still have the two most ambitious songs to cover). But for several weeks now I've had another musical itch eating at me, so I thought we could take some time out to deal with it.

And it involves a little story.

Playing in my NYC public-high-school orchestra wasn't all toil; there was the occasional perk. Okay, I'm way overstating the "toil" part, being that I wasn't what you would call a nose-to-the-grindstone practicer, which probably has something to do with how mediocre a violinist I was. And the perks weren't so grand either. The one I'm thinking of this week was a pass to a presentation on that week's New York Philharmonic subscription concert, at the Juilliard School -- not where it is now, in Lincoln Center, but in its old home on Claremont Avenue in the vertiginous reaches of Manhattan's Morningside Heights, premises that were taken over by the Manhattan School of Music when the Juilliard packed up and moved downtown.

Note that this beneficence didn't include a ticket to the actual concert.

It was a pretty venturesome solo subway journey from Brooklyn for a young teen still relatively new to the city, but I actually found the place, and then found my way back home, and in between I was treated to a presentation by the professor and composer Hugo Weisgall (right), who was so charming and witty and welcoming and smart that ever since, whenever I happen to listen to some of his music, I wish I enjoyed it half as well as I enjoyed Dr. Weisgall himself that evening.

I no longer remember the full program for that concert, or who the perfomers were -- in large part because the perk didn't include a ticket to the actual concert. But I do remember Dr. Weisgall talking about two of the works on the program. It was, I think, my first exposure to Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor (one of only two Mozart concertos in a minor key), and that exposure must have something to do with the lifelong passion I've since enjoyed for Mozart's piano concertos.


THEN THERE WAS RAVEL'S TZIGANE

Here's the key -- or is it?

Piano Trio: 
i. Allegro moderato -- opening

Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Jascha Heifetz, violn; Emanuel Feuermann, cello. RCA-BMG, recorded in Holllywood, Sept. 12-13, 1941

Vladimir Ashkenazy, piano; Itzhak Perlman, violin; Lynn Harrell, cello. EMI, recorded in New York, c1979

UPDATE: If you looked at this post before 10pm ET/7pm PT, you saw only the Ashkenazy-Perlman-Harrell clip, and in fact originally the whole first movement. When I went back to edit it to include just the opening, I was disheartened by how namby-pamby the performance is. (I actually thought the EMI CDs contained a different one, and then I figured how far wrong could we go with this one? I learned.) Most of my CD versions are on a hard-to-get-at shelf, so as an add-on I chose a much grander performance that happened also to be more readily at hand.

by Ken

This piece suddenly popped into my head this afternoon, and I couldn't have been happier that it did. So we're going to hear it tomorrow. Meanwhile it set me to thinking about other works in the same key, with the realization (I'm sure not for the first time, but then, who remembers?) that it's hard to find others of the same character.


SOME OTHER WORKS IN THE SAME KEY

Brooding and striving, grand and intimate, it's Bruch's "Scottish Fantasy"

by Ken

In Friday night's preview we revisited Beethoven's Choral Fantasy (for piano, soloists, chorus, and orchestra) and Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia (for piano and orchestra) in anticipation of turning our attention today to Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra.

With this installment we have concluded our survey of the three works of Bruch known to most music lovers. We heard the soulful Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra ("A haunting little piece that tells us less than we would think about its composer's roots") and the great First Violin Concerto in G minor ("From brooding depths to sparkling heights") in April.

THE SCOTTISH FANTASY WAS COMPOSED IN 1879-80 . . .

From brooding depths to sparkling heights -- Bruch's G minor Violin Concerto

Itzhak Perlman plays the opening Prelude (Allegro moderato) of the Bruch G minor Violin Concerto, with Kazuyoshi Akiyama conducting the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.

by Ken

In Friday night's "Max Bruch preview" we heard the composer's Kol Nidrei, an "Adagio based on a Hebrew melody," which I described as his second-best-known work. "The best-known," I wrote, "surely is his G minor Violin Concerto," noting that we would be listening to it today.

An obvious point of reference for what used to be known as "the Bruch Violin Concerto" but now has to be called "the Bruch First Violin Concerto" because there are two more (both craftsmanlike works but neither with anything like the irresistible appeal of the first), is the Sibelius D minor Violin Concerto, which is also through much of its way darkly brooding, then bursts out into a more animated finale. The Sibelius Concerto, though (which we heard in the November 2009 post "An intrepid voice from the rugged North -- Jan Sibelius"), was written 35-plus years later.

And then came "Widmung"

In Clarence Brown's Song of Love (1947), Paul Henreid as Robert Schumann introduces the newly composed "Widmung" to Katharine Hepburn as Clara; later Henry Daniell as Liszt plays his version, and finally Clara has her turn with it. (All the piano-playing is by Arthur Rubinstein, whom we'll hear playing the Liszt version straight through in the click-through.)

by Ken

Among the great creative feats on record, I'm not sure that any surpasses what is often referred to as Robert Schumann's Year of Song, 1840, the year in which he married Clara Wieck, which we talked about back in April 2010. As Eric Sams has put it, "In the 12 months beginning 1 February 1 1840 he wrote over 160 vocal works, including at least 135 of the 246 solo songs in the complete Peters Edition."

Near the head of the list is the collection of 26 songs published as Schumann's Op. 25, Myrthen (myrtles -- "European evergreen shrubs with white or rosy flowers that are often used to make bridal wreaths"), which the composer presented to Clara as a wedding gift and of course dedicated to her. And at the head of Myrthen is "Widmung" ("Dedication"), the exhilarating song we previewed Friday night.

SCHUMANN: "Widmung" ("Dedication"), Op. 25, No. 1


Baritone Hermann Prey, with pianist Leonard Hokanson (1975)

German text by Friedrich Rückert

You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world in which I live,
my heaven you in which I soar,
o you my grave in which
I have buried my sorrows forever.

You are rest; you are peace;
you were destined for me by heaven.
That you love me makes me feel worthy;
your glance has transfigured me;
you lift me, loving, above myself --
my good spirit, my better "I"!

You my soul, you my heart,
you my joy, o you my pain,
you my world, in which I live,
my heaven you, in which I soar --
my good spirit, my better "I"!

AS I MENTIONED FRIDAY NIGHT, IT WAS A RECITAL
THIS WEEK BY PIANIST ANNE-MARIE McDERMOTT . . .

Preview: Debussy -- the man who heard the music in moonlight

David Oistrakh plays "Clair de lune" ("Moonlight") with trusted accompanist Frida Bauer in Paris, 1962.

by Ken

So you think you don't know from Claude Debussy (1862-1918)? Here are three little pieces, originally written for piano solo, that have been absorbed into the general culture, arranged for just about every imaginable performance situation.

(1) "Clair de lune" ("Moonlight")

arranged (again) for violin and piano

Jascha Heiftez, violin; Emanuel Bey, piano (arr. Roelens). American Decca/MCA, recorded Nov. 29, 1945
arranged for guitar
Angel Romero, arr. and guitar. Telarc, recorded Aug. 3-6, 1987

played on the organ of New York City's Riverside Church

Virgil Fox, organ of the Riverside Church (New York City). Capitol/EMI, recorded Oct. 4, 1960