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.

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

Revisiting our musical glimpse into the sublime, Part 2

As I explained last week, in the post "Found Music Dept.: When music that pops into your path grabs hold and won't let go," the "found music" that made such an impact on me came in an early episode of the FX-via-Netflix series Pose, when 17-year-old Damon (Ryan Jamaal Swain), whom we see here making his way to NYC, having been thrown out of his home for dreaming of being a dancer (and, oh yes, being gay), has his world turned upside-down when he gets his first glimpse of real, live ballet, in the form of a dance choreographed to music by the Dance King himself.


Claudio Arrau, piano; Staatskapelle Dresden, Sir Colin Davis, cond. Philips, recorded November 1984

Alfred Brendel, piano; Vienna Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle, cond. Philips, recorded February 1998

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano and cond.; Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Sony, recorded in Prague, May 20-21, 2014

by Ken

Of the music in question, I wrote in Part 1 of this week's post earlier today ("Revisiting our musical glimpse into the sublime, Part 1"), "It's a piece I know about as well as I know my own name," which though accurate may have been a trifle misleading, in that these days there are moments when I give some thought to dredge up my name, and the truth is that while I knew the composer right away, it took me a bit to home in on the identity of the piece, of which I went on to write: "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."

The fact that it did take me a bit to make the positive ID puzzled me, and the best guess I came up with is that it stands as the middle movement between two movements I might best describe as "colossal" -- Beethoven at his "E-flat major"-est. There are keys that are known to be hospitable to string instruments, and there are keys known to be hospitable to wind instruments, among which perhaps none is more so than E-flat major, which always lends itself to full-throated musical celebration.

IS THERE ANY MORE FULL-THROATEDLY E-FLAT-MAJOR-ISH
MUSIC THAN THE OUTER MOVEMENTS OF THIS CONCERTO?

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"

Special Thursday edition: Here's some music so beautiful that it almost doesn't matter whether it matters at all

Including a note from Kurt Vonnegut expounding
his "canary-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts"


"I was perplexed as to what the usefulness of any of the arts might be, with the possible exception of interior decoration. The most positive notion I could come up with was what I call the canary-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts."

-- K.V. (who else?), a full half-century ago -- see below, just a bit

ALL RIGHT, TIME TO GET TO WORK



Music Sample No. 1

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center: Wu Han, piano; Ani Kavafian and Arnaud Sussmann, violins; Paul Neubauer, viola; Fred Sherry, cello. CMS Studio Recordings, recorded in New York City, April 2007


NOW, EXCERPTED FROM MR. VONNEGUT'S "Address to
the American Physical Society, New York City, February 5, 1969":

Many of you are physics teachers. I have been a teacher, too. I have taught creative writing. I often wondered what I thought I was doing, teaching creative writing, since the demand for creative writers is very small in this vale of tears. I was perplexed as to what the usefulness of any of the arts might be, with the possible exception of interior decoration. The most positive notion I could come up with was what I call the canary-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts. This theory argues that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are supersensitive. They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas, long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.

The most useful thing I could do before this meeting today is to keel over. On the other hand, artists are keeling over by the thousands every day and nobody seems to pay the least attention.

(appended in Vonnegut: Novels & Stories 1963-1973, Vol. 2 of Library of America's four-volume Kurt Vonnegut Edition)

by Ken

Okay, so I've missed yet another Sunday, in case it matters, which of course it doesn't -- and, oh yes, a Monday, Tuesday, and I guess Wednesday too, if you insist on counting every last gosh-darned day. But since I more or less had the components of this, er, post ready to go, or at least readyish, I've somehow summoned the determination to proceed, on the slim (slimmest?) chance that it might somehow matter, or come to matter. Somehow.

I'm pretty sure you don't want to go there, though. How 'bout instead we listen to more music? Perhaps a somewhat larger and sort-of-semi-self-contained chunk.

So I slapped on this CD I'd picked up -- and had to share this little Intermezzo, Cavatine, and Andante con moto

Yehudi Menuhin, violin; Jacques Février, piano. EMI, recorded Nov. 22-30, 1971

by Ken

Yes, I know we still have important work to complete on Schubert's song "An die Musik," Richard Strauss's song "Zueignung," and the Composer's memorable declaration in the Prologue to Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos that "Music is a holy art," dealing with the important (to me, anyway) questions: (1) What links them? (2) What the hell does it matter? The next, and hopefully final, installment is mostly written, though I suspect that a good part of what keeps me from trying to push it to completion is the fear that it isn't as near to completion as I'm pretending.

Meanwhile, did you listen to the little Intermezzo above? Is that beautiful or what? And did you note Yehudi Menuhin channeling an inner Gypsy I didn't know he had in him. That Intermezzo is one of three movements that grabbed my attention on a CD I slapped on while doing something-or-other at the computer -- all, interestingly, slow movements, from three different works by the same composer. And if you don't know who he is as we listen to the other two, so much the better, because if I hadn't known, I doubt that I would have guessed, and especially not from these slow movements, because even though this is a composer I'm reasonably familiar with, I don't have very good "markers" to identify his music, especially not music of this sort. Or rather these sorts, since these three slow movements are hardly peas in a pod.

So let's listen to a little Cavatine and a little Andante con moto.

Sonata for Cello and Piano:
ii. Cavatine

Pierre Fournier, cello; Jacques Février, piano. EMI, recorded Nov. 22-30, 1971

Trio for Piano, Oboe, and Bassoon:
ii. Andante con moto

Jacques Février, piano; Robert Casier, oboe; Gérard Faisandier, bassoon. EMI, recorded Jan. 20-21, 1964


"THE GUITAR MAKES DREAMS WEEP"

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.

In which Beethoven's violin sonatas turn out to be OK after all

David Oistrakh and Sviatoslav Richter play Beethoven's First Violin Sonata, in 1970.

by Ken

As I mentioned in Friday night's preview, I came away from a recent three-recital series presenting the complete Beethoven violin sonatas, well, impressed but unenchanted. The violinist and pianist seemed earnest and competent, and from their performances as well as their spoken comments there didn't seem any doubt about their appreciation for the music. And yet I came away thinking my longtime fondness for this music had maybe been outgrown.

Now the Beethoven violin sonatas aren't necessarily the most diverse portion of the composer's output. For one thing, they were written mostly in a fairly compact time frame. The first eight date from the period 1797-1802 -- the three sonatas of Op. 12 in 1797-98, the single sonatas of Opp. 23 and 24 in 1800-01, and the three sonatas of Op. 30 in 1802 (an important year for Beethoven; as we know from the famous Heiligenstadt Testament, he was in such despair that he came close to committing suicide). The great sonata we know as the Kreutzer, written on a much grander scale, followed soon after, leaving only by the fascinating and lovely G major Sonata, Op. 96, to come -- from 1812, making it the closest thing there is to a "late" Bethoven violin sonata.

But contrast came almost automatically for Beethoven. As we've discussed in such cases as the "fraternal twin" Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, expressing himself in one mode of musical discourse seemed to build up a need to express himself in a very different one.

I guess I was left thinking that the generally lighter emotional weight of the violin sonatas led to a lesser degree of individuality. Until something curious happened.

SO I PUT ON THIS CD . . .