The Heifetz Collection Vol. 11-15 - The Concerto Collection

Beethoven • Brahms It is virtually a cliché of music criticism to say that the Beethoven and Brahms violin concertos are the towering masterpieces of the genre. Certainly they have much in common. Both were conceived for famous virtuosos (Beethoven's for Franz Clement, Brahms's for Joseph Joachim) who contributed substantially to the shaping of each work's solo part. Both works acknowledge tradition, the Beethoven building on the Classical style of Mozart, the Brahms on the extension of that style made by Beethoven. And both works make extraordinary technical demands of the soloist while remaining free of showy pyrotechnics. The Beethoven had its premiere in 1806 at a concert that by today's standards would seem a bit odd. Clement, already a famous soloist at 26, was also the first violinist and conductor of the Theater an der Wien orchestra. The concert was for his benefit and aimed at showing off his skill. Thus, after the first movement of the concerto, he played one of his own compositions on a single string of the violin held upside down. Despite such gauche displays, he must have been a sensitive musician, contemporaries noting the "grace" and "tenderness" that typified his playing. Evidently recognizing these traits, Beethoven created some of his most tender and graceful music for Clement. Yet it is music that must have shocked the audience at its premiere. For one thing, it extended the Classical violin concerto to unprecedented length. Furthermore, the very opening must have seemed strange, the tutti beginning most atypically with a solo kettledrum. Then there are the brusque outbursts of the full orchestra in the first movement, a piquant use of chromaticism, and the sustained delicacy of the slow movement strikingly colored by the muted strings of the orchestra. But if the concerto shocked some in the audience, others may well have recognized the ways in which it honored the tradition from which it seemed to depart. For all of its length, the first movement is a sonata-form edifice of great economy; its melodies are as simple and direct as those of Mozart, and the finale is a strict rondo and as taut as any by Bach. Even some of the chromatic splashes are worked in with a smoothness that conceals their starkness, another typically Mozartean trait. It is probably safe to say that had Beethoven not composed his violin concerto, the Brahms would be quite different from what it is. Beethoven's music provided the aesthetic yardstick by which Brahms gauged much of his own work, and his concerto—in its mastery of sonata structure, blend of length and economy, bold assertiveness and gentle lyricism, virtuosic demands and total freedom from display for its own sake—is cut from Beethovenian cloth. Still, it has a distinct Brahmsian slant. The first movement's flow is redolent of the sea Brahms loved and Beethoven never saw; it also has a thematic lushness that at times is more suggestive of Tchaikovsky than of Viennese Classicism. And the Hungarian character of the finale reflects an interest in an ethnic style that Beethoven ignored and which Brahms may well have been drawn to through Joachim. Yet for all its marked originality, the audience at its premiere in 1879 probably found less that was shocking than did those at the premiere of the Beethoven 73 years earlier. Given their stature, it is hardly surprising that both concertos were at the core of Heifetz's repertory. What is surprising, however, is his untraditional view that only the violin concertos of Beethoven and Mozart deserve the tag "greatest." And if his exclusion of the Brahms was untraditional, so, too, was his approach to it—and to the Beethoven. With their melodic richness and cantabile character, both works were often subjected to a breadth of tempo and a rhythmic freedom that generated a performance tradition running counter to their Classical mold. In departing from such practices, Heifetz honored the style at the heart of both works. His tone is colored by a vibrato that never seems excessive and prevents melodies from cloying. His pulse remains steady, thereby tightening structure, yet his rhythm is supple, Heifetz recognizing that rubato literally means "robbed time" and that what is stolen from one measure must be repaid in another. And his approach to the Beethoven is stamped with the "simplicity, a kind of clear beauty" that he felt characterized the work and which—as he himself put it— "makes it harder to play than many other things technically more advanced. The slightest flaw, the least difference in pitch, in intonation, and its beauty suffers. " It was such clear vision in aesthetic matters that may well have fostered the view among some critics that Heifetz's consistency was an indication of rigidity, but what such criticism failed to recognize is that within this consistency was a flexible, frequently changing concept. The performances heard here, for instance, differ from his earlier recordings of both concertos in phrasing, pacing and rhythmic shading. With his technique remaining secure over the 15 or so years that separate the two versions, such challenges as the exposed octaves with which the violin enters in the Beethoven and the demanding multiple stops in the Brahms are handled with seeming ease. But behind this ease glow thoughtful conceptions of a consummate musician who did not hestitate to revise his views of these towering masterpieces. —Mortimer H. Frank Contributing Editor, Fanfare, Slereophile Tchaikovsky • Mendelssohn "Max Bruch has written a concerto for the violin; Brahms has written a concerto against the violin! " Thus spoke Hans von Biilow soon after the Brahms received its initial performance. His dichotomy could apply with equal justice to the pair of concertos heard on this CD. Mendelssohn's is regarded as a work of perfection—a superb synthesis of content and structure, of Romanticism and Classicism, and though technically demanding, it is eminently violinistic in its patrician workmanship. In composing this concerto, Mendelssohn sought the advice of, and worked closely with, Ferdinand David, the leading violin virtuoso of his day. Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, tended toward rashness—even, as some would claim, to self-destructiveness: he would impulsively compose an ambitious work and then be advised that it was "unplayable. " His celebrated quarrel with Nicholas Rubinstein over the First Piano Concerto was, with somewhat less acrimony, repeated when the composer dedicated his 1878 Violin Concerto to the great Leopold Auer. In this particular instance Tchaikovsky had consulted an expert, the virtuoso Josef Kotek, but Auer's unflattering appraisal of the work (mainly because of its punishing difficulty) was largely echoed by the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick when the concerto was at last performed by a more enterprising soloist, Adolf Brodsky. Hanslick thought Brodsky "ill-advised" to make his first Viennese appearance with this work, and though he conceded that Tchaikovsky's was no "commonplace talent," he lamented his "curious combination of forced originality and crudeness, of happy ideas and wretched affectation ... The violin is no longer played but torn apart, beaten black and blue," and he concluded, "Tchaikovsky raises for the first time the terrible possibility that there can be music that stinks in the ear. " In fairness to Hanslick, one must assume that Brodsky undoubtedly found the concerto a cruel technical challenge. Auer revised his estimate of the work, teaching it to many of his pupils. But, like so many artists of his Romantic orientation, in "accepting" the music, he also made it his own by bringing out a highly edited version. Some of Auer's textual changes—such as the judicious prunings in the third movement to make it less repetitious—have become standard performance practice. With performers more technically accomplished today, the concerto has become eminently playable by virtually any good violinist, and Auer's modifications have also made the music more lyrical and less abrasive. Heifetz, of course, studied with Auer and, like his fellow Auer pupil Mischa Elman, first played the Tchaikovsky concerto with the full gamut of Auer emendations. So, if recordings are reliable evidence, did Georg Kulenkampff, David Oistrakh and Leonid Kogan. These revisions are to be heard in Heifetz's 1937 recording with Barbirolli and in his account of the first movement in the 1946 film Carnegie Hall. But whereas Elman, Oistrakh and Kogan reverted to Tchaikovsky's original text in their later accounts (always excepting those third-movement adjustments), Heifetz, conversely, added more to Auer's interpolations for greater brilliance. In addition, his incomparably elegant and lyrical interpretation became increasingly dramatic and impassioned with the passing decades. A 1920 acoustic recording preserves the Finale of the Mendelssohn concerto, effortlessly performed by Heifetz at a blistering tempo. And there are his four surviving complete performances of the work: two studio recordings (1949 with Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic and the 1959 version heard here) and two "live" accounts—a 1944 NBC broadcast with Toscanini and a collaboration, a decade later, with Guido Cantelli and the New York Philharmonic (neither one approved for release on records). Surprisingly, the account with Toscanini is the slowest of the four, but even with Toscanini that whirlwind Finale is typical of the great violinist's way with this music. The valedictory 1959 version, perhaps a trifle more comfortable in tempo, is essentially the same patrician, disciplined approach and has a rapport with Munch and the Boston Symphony that Heifetz did not achieve in his collaboration with Sir Thomas. Although a more gemütlich, expansive style typifies an approach to the concerto, one is compelled to accept the Heifetz mastery on its own terms. The regal symmetry of his phrasing here is an apt reminder that the violinist's name (in Hebrew) means "gem" or "jewel." The two shorter Tchaikovsky compositions are appropriate fillers. The Séré-nade mélancolique is thought to have been a sketch or study for the concerto's slow movement. The ever-popular Waltz from the Serenade in C takes on a showy, devil-may-care brilliance in this arrangement. These two performances date from one of Heifetz's last recording sessions—he played both many years earlier in front of the acoustic horn. —Harris Goldsmith Brahms • Bach • Mozart The works in this program are all double concertos, but only the one by Brahms has come to be so identified. All are superb examples of how a great composer becomes innovative, not by being completely original but by building upon tradition. The tradition in this case is that of the Baroque concerto, best typified, perhaps, by Bach's Brandenburgs and Handel's concerti grossi. Bach himself defined the style of his celebrated two-violin work on the title page of its manuscript, calling it a concerto for two solo violins and strings and continuo "di ripieno." Thus, in terms of style what mainly sets this two-violin concerto apart from the Brandenburgs is its less varied assemblage of solo instruments. Yet it is hardly a less expressive or less emotional piece. Indeed, in defining the concerto grosso style, the great Baroque theorist Johann Mattheson noted "sensuality reigns" in such a work. Certainly in this Bach score, especially its slow movement, one encounters the "affect" Mattheson cites. Bach completed the concerto during his Cöthen period sometime between 1717 and 1723, the same period in which he wrote his Brandenburg Concertos. Drawing upon the principles of the Baroque concerto, with its contrasts of tutti and solo forces and its use of reiterated motivic fragments, Mozart led the way in the evolution of the Classical concerto. It is a genre to which the Sinfonia concertante (as much as any of his celebrated piano concertos) belongs. To the Baroque concerto Mozart added key facets of the Classical sonata: its framework of exposition, development and recapitulation in which a clash of tonalities and the transformation of character that thematic material undergoes produce a unique brand of musical drama. Interestingly, the Sinfonia concertante is never mentioned in any of Mozart's letters to his family. In part this may be because he intended the violin part for his father, who was a celebrated soloist; moreover, at the time of the work's completion in 1779, Mozart himself had found new delight in playing the viola. The work, then, may have been composed as a father/son vehicle. Whatever, with its melodic richness and haunting chromaticism, it is one of Mozart's towering masterpieces. Brahms, undoubtedly familiar with the Baroque concerto, may have had it in mind when composing his Double Concerto. Perhaps because of this and because it is a late work (completed in 1887), it is one of his most compact creations—exceptionally terse in its mastery of the Classical concerto style perfected by Mozart and continued by Beethoven. Noteworthy, too, the concept of the concerto led Brahms to seek a reconciliation with the great violinist Joseph Joachim. It was a welcomed gesture, and (as in the composer's violin concerto) the Hungarian character of the finale may well be an expression of admiration for Joachim, who along with cellist Robert Hausmann (of the Joachim Quartet) gave the premiere with Brahms conducting in 1887. Heifetz recorded the Double Concerto twice, the 1939 version with Emanuel Feuermann and conductor Eugene Ormandy being only its second recording ever and the first made in the United States. Heifetz's having recorded it with two of the most distinguished cellists of the century bespeaks not only his interest in the work but also a willingness to share the spotlight. Both recordings reveal remarkable give and take between soloists and both, in their rhythmic rectitude and freedom from the sentimentality often imposed on the score's melodic lushness, underscore the balance and integrity that shape the work. This sense of style also stamps the two other performances on this disc. In the Bach, the fleet opening Allegro was somewhat atypical for its time, but it anticipated an approach later favored by many period-instrument groups. And in this account with Erick Friedman (who was a Heifetz protégé) there is a requisite contrast between the two soloists absent from the technical tour de force of Heifetz's 1946 recording of the work, where he played both solo parts. According to William Primrose, Heifetz neglected the Mozart Sinfonia because he did not like it but eventually changed his mind. And when the two made this recording they stripped the music of any hint of the sentimentality in which it was sometimes smothered, the second movement, in particular, played as a true andante: with forward motion. More recent presentations have revised our notion of what constitutes apt pacing in Mozart, so the once seemingly revolutionary tempos in this performance sound utterly reasonable. —Mortimer H. Frank