45 seconds' worth of musicI can't get out of my head

We've heard it before (and we're going to hear it again)

Technically, it's not really even part of a movement of the Mendelssohn E minor Violin Concerto, these 14 bars of Allegretto non tanto which provide a transitional bridge from the sublime central Andante to the romping rondo (as announced in the Allegro molto vivace above). I'm used to having the Andante seize control of me -- but this little Allegretto non troppo?

by Ken

Okay, I admit I was having a little fun with the part about our having "a soloist and conductor so closely in sync," but I wasn't kidding about "the conductor [having] the orchestra not just phrasing but practically breathing with the soloist."


LAST WEEK WE HEARD IT TACKED ONTO THE ANDANTE

ii. Andante -- Allegretto non tanto

Utah Symphony Orchestra, Joseph Silverstein, violin and cond. Pro Arte, recorded in Symphony Hall, Salt Lake City, Nov. 19 & 21, 1983

And I wrote this about it:

"No, don't crank up the volume at the start! Our soloist is really choosing to play this music -- which I sometimes think just may be the most beautiful ever written -- so, er, confidentially. There's plenty of presence in the sound; I'd describe it as quite intense; the soloist just isn't going to make a display of it. Meanwhile the conductor has the orchestra not just phrasing but practically breathing with the soloist. How often do you get a soloist and conductor so closely in sync?"

NOW LET'S BACK UP A BIT -- INTO THE ANDANTE --
AND LET IT RUN THROUGH TO THE END OF THE RONDO

end of ii. Andante -- Allegretto non troppo [at 1:05] --
iii. Allegro molto vivace [at 1:51]

Joseph Silverstein, violin, with the Utah Symphony (credits as above)


WE'VE ACTUALLY HEARD A BUNCH OF PERFORMANCES
OF THE ANDANTE OF THE MENDELSSOHN CONCERTO

And in a number of cases I stopped the clip at the end of what I would call "the Andante proper." No reason for this than I can recall -- I think it just hadn't occurred to me to be sure to tack on the Allegretto non tanto. Very possibly I was thinking that such a hanging-in-mid-air ending would be bad form for our listening experience, and only later came to realize that this very up-in-the-airness teaches us a lesson about the structure of the concerto.

The BSO's soon-to-be-seated new concertmaster, 'the other Nathan,' is only its 4th in the last 104 years

"We had immense pleasure collaborating with Nathan last January on Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk."

-- from Boston Symphony music director Andris Nelsons's statement
on the naming of Nathan Cole as the orchestra's new concertmaster

"I feel fortunate to have known two people who held the position before me, Malcolm Lowe and Joseph Silverstein. Silverstein [pictured at right, c2008] was one of my idols, and I grew up with many of the Boston Symphony Chamber Players recordings. Any time that I had to learn a piece, BSCP would have a recording of it with Silverstein leading, so I had his sound in my ear early on and was lucky to get to work with him before he passed away. He was extremely generous with his time and wisdom. He took himself seriously enough to continue working on his craft all the way through the end of his life. But I always got the sense that he knew he was a custodian of the position, and that everything he did was for his colleagues and for the music, and that’s something that I want to carry forward." -- from Nathan C.'s statement (same link)

In October 2017, preparing for his first performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, Nathan C. video-recorded his choice for the first-movement cadenza, by "one of my heroes," Nathan Milstein (1904-1992). Nathan C. is playing the 1716 Strad formerly owned by Nathan M., which he had on loan for the occasion, an experience he detailed in a genuinely must-read account for Violinist.com: "Speed-dating a Strad: one week with Milstein's ex."

Welcome to natesviolin.com! Mentoring the next generations of violinists has been a longtime passion of the BSO's new concertmaster. An abundance of videos can be found online, and NatesViolin.com provides a wealth of resources and support for aspiring violinists as well as considerable interest for music lovers with curiosity about the nuts 'n' bolts of the medium (not to mention failed -- or shall we say "unaspiring"? -- fiddlers).

by Ken

I know that's a mouthful of a quote I've reproduced above from Nathan Cole on his appointment as BSO concertmaster. I expected to edit it down to a "tease" here, as I did with Andris Nelsons's statement, which we'll be reading in full later. But the danged quote just wouldn't edit down. I loved it when I first read it, and after several weeks of poking around Nathan C.'s career and gathering materials for some sort of overview of the succession of these three concertmasters, I'm even more impressed -- and touched. (I have pretty high regard for Joseph Silverstein myself.) And I felt even more strongly that the quote needs to be taken in one fell swoop. One thing you learn about Nathan C. is that not only is he highly knowing and communicative as a musician (we're going to be coming back to that 2017 performance of the Beethoven Concerto), but he's remarkably communicative with words.

If you were here for last week's SC pre-post, "At home with Nathan and Akiko (aka 'Stand partners for life')," you already heard Nathan C., at the time first associate concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, "pre-performing" his choice of a third-movement cadenza, Fritz Kreisler's, for that October 2017 performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. We'll come back to that performance, but first I guess we should focus on the not-quite-breaking news.

When the Boston Symphony launches its Tanglewood season on July 5, with an all-Beethoven program under music director Andris Nelsons (who this year takes on the added role of Tanglewood "head of conducting"), the orchestra will at last have a new occupant for the Charles Munch Chair, which is to say the concertmaster's seat -- named of course for the BSO's 1949-62 music director [pictured at right]. The Charles Munch Chair hasn't been filled since 35-year incumbent Malcolm Lowe retired after the 2019 Tanglewood season. (The onset of the pandemic can't have had a salutary effect on the replacement process.)


THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF MALCOLM LOWE'S RETIREMENT . . .

At home with Nathan and Akiko(aka "Stand Partners for Life"*)

*"Stand Partners for Life": Check out Nathan and Akiko's podcast

LA Phil Home Recitals: Nathan Cole & Akiko Tarumoto
[For now you'll have to trust me that there's a reason why we're interested just now. -- Ed.]

Nathan and Akiko introduce themselves and the music, then --
[at 0:55] Wieniawski: Étude-Caprice, Op. 18, No. 2: Andante

And then -- Étude-Caprice, Op. 18, No. 4: Tempo di Saltarella,
ma non troppo vivo

[from their May 2020 LA Phil Home Recital]

by Ken

Back in early pandemic days, like their Los Angeles Philharmonic colleagues first associate concertmaster Nathan Cole and assistant concertmaster Akiko Tarumoto (or, as Nathan has put it in at least one introduction: "No. 2 and No. 4" among the LA Phil first violins) were on their own with their three children at home, and for the online series of "LA Phil Home Recitals" served up this potion of home-brewed music: Nos. 2 and 4 of Henryk (aka Henri) Wieniawski's Op. 18 set of eight Études-Caprices.

The Études-Caprices, as Nathan notes, were written as essentially violin solos with the accompaniment of a second violin, so he and Akiko have done some rearranging to allot equal measures of "good stuff" to the two parts. My original intention was to pluck out one of the two pieces, and I duly made a clip of No. 4, the sparkling Tempo di Saltarella. But it just seemed wrong to jump into it without the setup of the lovely Andante of No. 2 -- so there they both are.


OH, AND HERE'S NATHAN PLAYING "HOME RECITAL" BACH

BACH: Solo Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor, S. 1001:
i. Adagio

"I'd like to play for you the first movement of Bach's First Sonata for Solo Violin in G minor. Now this is a piece I've played my whole life. It was the very first solo Bach that I ever learned. I'm sure I was 10 or 11 years old, way before I could understand the music of Bach. But I've had my ups and downs with it ever since. I've always loved this music dearly, but I've had some scary moments too. One recital that I played -- this very movement, I got about three lines in, and I had no idea what came next! So, very embarrassing, I had to just stop, start over, and when I got to that spot again, I thought it was going to happen again! Then miraculously I remembered the next notes! So, I'm going to hope that doesn't happen here! I always loved playing solo Bach, and I'm overjoyed to be able to share this music with you during this time. Thanks!"

[from his April 2020 "LA Phil Home Recital" -- watch here]

WHY JUST NOW DO WE CARE ABOUT NATHAN AND AKIKO?

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.

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 --

One Sunday afternoon inAugust 1943 in Carnegie Hall . . .Part 1: The concert

The first page of the concert program from August 15, 1943

[New York Philharmonic Digital Archives]

by Ken

I claimed in the Sunday-into-Monday pre-post "Can we do a better job assembling the three movements of this symphony than, you know, the guy who composed them?" that we would be undertaking "a sort of re-creation" of the August 1943 broadcast concert whose concluding work we heard in its entirety in that pre-post, and I mean the actual performance -- sent out into the airwaves from the stage of Carnegie Hall that Sunday afternoon. Believe it or not, that's just what we're going to do: our concert re-creation, followed by an assortment of, let's say, sidebars.

We're going to hear that performance again, this time properly identified, when we get to that place in the concert, following intermission -- if the word "intermission" can reasonably be applied to an interval specified in the program (as we'll see) as "5 MINUTES." The program, by the way, is just one of a trove of treasures now accessible to all in the New York Philharmonic Digital Archives, where we can also digitally thumb through the score marked up by Leonard Bernstein [right] when he performed and recorded the work in October 1963, early in the second season of Philharmonic Hall, the orchestra's acoustically challenged new Lincoln Center home.


WHILE IT'S ONLY FOR THE CONCERT'S FEATURED WORK . . .

Pre-post: Can we do a better job assembling the three movements of this symphony than, you know, the guy who composed them?

LET'S PUT TOGETHER OUR OWN SYMPHONY!
(By juggling the movements of this 1943 broadcast performance)

(1)
Here's the thing in "traditional" fast-slow-fast configuration:
i. Allegro  || ii.  Largo [at 6:38]  ||  iii. Presto [at 28:06]


(2)
Here, the short quick movements lead up to the big slow one:
i. Allegro  ||  ii. Presto [at 6:38]  ||  iii. Largo [at 14:02]


(3)
Or, start with the giant movement, then tack on the 'quickies':
i. Largo  ||  ii. Allegro [at 21:32]  ||  iii. Presto [at 28:10]


by Ken

Haven't we all had the itch at some time to rejigger some or all of the movements of some symphony or other? Thinking, you know, that we can do a better assembly job than the person whose only authority was having composed the damned things?

This is basically what I've played at doing above, with a symphony that has the strangest structure of any I can think of from the pen of what I'm going to call a "serious symphonist," as anyone who approaches the piece for the first time is bound to notice quickly: three movements, with a slow movement that is considerably longer than the two fast movements put together. Many readers will recognize this symphony. For those who don't, I should disclose at the outset that in this "pre-post" I'm not going to disclose the identity of either the composer or the work -- a little experiment I'm hoping will be more interesting, even fun, for those who don't recognize the symphony. (For anyone who feels cheated, I would suggest that by pre-post's end, enough information will have been disclosed to enable online searchers to track the piece down in a minute or two.


BY CLICKING THROUGH TO THE PRE-POST
JUMP, THE READER WILL BE ABLE TO:

Q: What connection is there between these beautiful works by Beethoven and Janáček that have "Kreutzer Sonata" in their names?

However limited the connection, it's more than
either work has with anybody named Kreutzer


Leoš Janáček's First String Quartet ("After L. N. Tolstoy's 'The Kreutzer Sonata'") gets a no-nonsense performance by the Kubín Quartet (Luděk Cap and Jan Niederle, violins; Pavel Vítek, viola; Jiří Hanousek, cello) at a concert in Ostrava (Czech Republic), Jan. 28, 2013.
i. Adagio -- Con moto -- Vivo [at 0:10]; ii. Con moto -- Energico e appassionato -- Tempo I [at 4:00]; iii. Con moto -- Vivace -- Andante -- Tempo I [at 7:56]; iv. Con moto -- Tempo II -- Adagio -- Maestoso (Tempo I) -- più mosso, feroce [at 11:32]

by Ken

If we take the post-title question ("What connection do these beautiful works by Beethoven and Janáček with 'Kreutzer Sonata' in their names have?") to mean "What direct connection?," and if we specify apart from (1) having 'Kreutzer Sonata' in their names and (2) being both very beautiful, then the answer is: well, no connection, really.


WE'LL GET TO THE BEETHOVEN WORK THAT HAS
"KREUTZER SONATA" IN ITS NAME, BUT FIRST --

A handful of notes:

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