Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with Carrie Krause
What to listen for
Violin Concerto: the Larghetto’s hushed intimacy, as the soloist plays in the highest part of the violin’s range; the exuberant off-beat rocking melody of the closing Rondo.
Lyric for Strings: Melodies weave in and out of the overall musical tapestry, moving slowly though shifting moods that evoke loss, nostalgia, memories of past loved ones, and the quiet comfort such memories can bring to the bereaved.
Symphony No. 4, “Italian”: A sun-drenched musical travelog of Mendelssohn’s extended visit to Italy. The outer movements capture the warm weather and sunny temperament of the country and its people
Other works by these composers
Beethoven: Romanzas in F and G for Violin and Orchestra; Symphony No. 7 in A major; “Archduke” Trio, Op. 97
Walker: Address for Orchestra; Icarus in Orbit; “Lilacs”
Mendelssohn: Overture and Incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64
Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61
Composer: born December 16, 1770, Bonn; died March 26, 1827, Vienna
Work composed: 1806. Commissioned by and dedicated to Franz Clement, music director and concertmaster of the Theatre an der Wien.
World premiere: Clement performed the solo at the premiere, which Beethoven conducted at the Theater an der Wien on December 23, 1806.
Instrumentation: solo violin, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Estimated duration: 42 minutes
Ludwig van Beethoven’s only violin concerto shattered conventional notions of what a Romantic solo concerto could or should be. Instead of using the concerto as a vehicle to show off the soloist’s technique, Beethoven placed the music front and center, while also giving the soloist plenty of opportunities to display musical skill.
21-year-old Franz Clement, music director and concertmaster of the Theater an der Wien, commissioned the Violin Concerto in 1806. After the premiere, Clement suggested revisions to the solo part, which Beethoven incorporated into his revised score.
Even masterworks can be diminished by a mediocre performance. According to published accounts, Beethoven finished the concerto just two days before the premiere, which meant Clement had to sight-read the opening performance. Although it was beautiful, and staggeringly difficult, the lack of adequate rehearsal, among other factors, left the Violin Concerto with a bad reputation, which took 30 years to dissipate. 38 years after its premiere, 12-year-old violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim presented the concerto at his debut with the London Philharmonic in 1844. Joachim pored over the score, memorized the entire piece, and composed his own cadenzas in preparation. The hard work paid off; one reviewer noted, “[Joachim] is perhaps the finest violin player, not only of his age, but of his siècle [century]. He performed Beethoven’s solitary concerto, which we have heard all the great performers of the last twenty years attempt, and invariably fail in … its performance was an eloquent vindication of the master-spirit who imagined it.”
Unlike Beethoven’s concertos for piano, which feature thick, dense chords and difficult scalar passages, the violin solo is graceful and lyrical. This warm expressiveness matched Clement’s style of playing, which Beethoven said exemplified “an extremely delightful tenderness and purity.”
The concerto begins unconventionally, with five repeating notes in the timpani. This simple knocking is repeated, like a gentle but persistent heartbeat, throughout the movement, and becomes a recurring motif. In another distinctive break from tradition, the soloist does not enter for a full three minutes, and then begins a cappella (unaccompanied), before reiterating the first theme in a high register.
The Larghetto’s main melody is stately, intimate, and tranquil, and becomes an orchestral backdrop over which the solo violin traces graceful arabesques in ethereally high registers. The soloist takes center stage in this movement, playing extended cadenzas and other passages with minimal accompaniment.
The final Rondo-Allegro flows seamlessly from the Larghetto; the soloist launches immediately into a rocking melody that suggests a boat bobbing at anchor. Typical rondo format features a primary theme (A), which is interspersed with contrasting sections (B, C, D, etc.) Each of these contrasting sections departs from the (A) theme, sometimes in mood, sometimes by shifting from major to minor, or by changing keys entirely.
George Walker: Lyric for Strings
Composer: born June 27, 1922, Washington, D.C.; died August 23, 2018, Montclair, NJ
Work composed: 1946. Dedicated “to my grandmother.”
World premiere: 1946. Seymour Lipkin led a student orchestra from the Curtis Institute of Music in a radio concert.
Estimated duration: 6 minutes
George Theophilus Walker pursued three successful careers in performance, composition, and teaching. After graduating from Oberlin Conservatory, Walker attended the Curtis Institute, becoming the first Black student to earn an Artist’s Diploma in piano and composition. At Curtis, Walker studied piano with Rudolf Serkin and composition with Gian Carlo Menotti. Walker continued his education at the Eastman School of Music, where he earned a D.M.A. in composition, the first Black person to do so. In the 1950s, Walker traveled to Paris to study composition with Nadia Boulanger.
Walker’s life list of accomplishments includes many more “firsts:” he was the first Black instrumentalist to play a recital in New York’s Town Hall; the first Black soloist to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, and the first Black instrumentalist to obtain major concert management, with National Concert Artists. In 1996, Walker became the first Black composer to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra, a setting of Walt Whitman’s poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” In 2000, Walker was elected to the American Classical Music Hall of Fame, the first living composer so honored.
Like Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Walker’s Lyric for Strings, initially titled Lament for Strings, began as a movement for string quartet. Walker wrote his String Quartet No. 1 in 1946 as a graduate student at the Curtis Institute. He dedicated the Lament to his grandmother, who had died the previous year. The quartet premiered on a live radio performance of Curtis’ student orchestra in 1946, and the following year received its concert premiere at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Walker gave the second movement a new title, Lyric for Strings. As a stand-alone piece, it quickly became one of the most regularly programmed works by a living composer. Melodies interweave among the instruments, and the pensive atmosphere captures both the composer’s anguish at the passing of his beloved grandmother, as well as the joy her memory evokes. The romantic melodies and lush harmonic underpinnings create an expressive but never mawkish atmosphere of love and loss.
Felix Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90, “Italian”
Composer: born February 3, 1809, Hamburg; died November 4, 1847, Leipzig
Work composed: 1833, rev. 1834
World premiere: Mendelssohn led the Philharmonic Society in London on May 13, 1833
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.
Estimated duration: 27 minutes
In 1830-31, Felix Mendelssohn traveled in Italy, spending most of his time in Rome. While there, Mendelssohn wrote several of his best-known works, including the “Italian” Symphony. Although widely considered the finest of Mendelssohn’s symphonies, the “Italian” failed to please its creator. Even after its auspicious premiere, which Mendelssohn conducted to great acclaim in London, the 24-year-old composer was dissatisfied. Ignaz Moscheles, a close friend of Mendelssohn’s, who attended the premiere, noted in his diary, “Mendelssohn was the outstanding success of the concert; he conducted his magnificent A major Symphony and received rapturous applause.” Nonetheless, soon after the premiere, Mendelssohn began making revisions. He continued tinkering with Op. 90 until his death, and observed that the symphony caused him “some of the bitterest moments I have ever endured.” In the end, Mendelssohn’s dissatisfaction with the Italian Symphony led to his refusal to conduct it again, or permit it to be published during his lifetime.
Mendelssohn’s abiding unhappiness over Op. 90 is puzzling; both Moscheles and Mendelssohn’s sister Fanny, a gifted composer herself, praised its form, artful melodies, and overall grace. Unconvinced, Mendelssohn continued revising it, and left a detailed outline of changes he wanted to make to the first three movements. Four years after Mendelssohn’s death, the “Italian” Symphony was published, albeit without Mendelssohn’s revisions. Since then, audiences have embraced the work, and it is among Mendelssohn’s most popular and most frequently programmed symphonies.
When recalling his trip to Italy, Mendelssohn said, “The whole country had such a festive air that I felt as if I were a young prince making his entry.” The Allegro vivace reflects the relaxed confidence of a young man on the brink of new adventures, as well as the warmth of the Italian sun, the deep blueness of the sky, and the sunny temperament of the Italian people. The mood of the Andante con moto is more introspective; the melody, in a minor key, is supported by pizzicato strings, which provide a walking bass line suggestive of footsteps. Mendelssohn observed a number of Church rituals during his stay in Rome, and this processional quality suggests the solemn rites of a religious ceremony. With the Con moto moderato, Mendelssohn returns to the warmth of the first movement, taming its exuberance into a graceful minuet, accompanied by a trio of winds and brasses. Mendelssohn titled the final movement a saltarello, after an energetic Italian dance. The rapid-fire theme skips nimbly and without pause through the orchestra, first in the winds, then the strings and brasses. The perpetual-motion quality of this music suggests another Italian dance, the tarantella, named for the mistaken belief that immediate exertion would save the victim of a tarantula’s bite from its deadly poison.
© Elizabeth Schwartz