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Artykuł BEETHOVEN<br />Sonatas Nos. 9 & 5<br />David Oistrakh, Lev Oborin pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.

1806 was the year after the composition of Fidelio, the year of its first revision, and the year in which Beethoven wrote three sunny masterpieces, the serenest and most loving of which is certainly this violin concerto. He dedicated it, not to the co-operative lady friend of the moment, but to his boyhood friend Stephan von Breuning, a character who emerges more finely from the tale of Beethoven’s life than any of his other friends.
The concerto was written for Franz Clement who, at 26, was conductor and leader (two more or less synonymous posts, since baton-waving was not invented) of the famous Theater an der Wien. The concerto was written quickly, but only just completed in time for the first performance on 23 December; Clement is said to have sight-read his part, but this is not too stunning a feat, since he had been advising Beethoven on the layout of the solo, and may even have influenced the nature of the Rondo theme. At the première Clement played the new work in two parts, the Larghetto being preceded by an interval and a group of solos
—one of these was a sonata for one-stringed fiddle played upside down. Czerny was mightily impressed by Clement’s performance, but the concerto was thought insignificant until Joseph Joachim popularized it later in the century.
Concert-goers of a past generation speak with reverent phrases of his inter-pretation, and claim it has never been equalled since; for younger folk the Beethoven violin concerto means Fritz Kreisler, and it is curious that he excelled in just those passages singled out by Joachim’s eulogists, the G minor passage in the middle of the first movement, and the deathly hushed second tune of the Larghello.
Both these great players have left fine sets of cadenzas to the concerto. David Oistrakh plays those by Kreisler on the present record. The cadenzas by Beethoven to the concerto were designed for the adaptation as a piano concerto which he made in 1807, and dedicated to von Breuning’s wife. The first movement cadenza was scored for piano and obbligato drums—it has been transcribed in our own time for violin and drums by Max Rostal.
The point of the drum obbligato is shown by the first bars of the concerto, for the four drum taps are the germinal force of the whole movement, a magical and original manifestation of a characteristic Beethoven procedure. You hear them throughout the orchestral exposition which contains five principal ideas, the last of which quietens down for what is arguably the most inspired solo entry in the literature of the concerto. The violin soars awhile, sinks, then soars again: the cadence is completed and the solo exposition can begin, but the conventional break between these two sections has been ironed out as though it had never existed.
The coda after the cadenza begins with the soloist playing on the violin’s two lowest strings. Beethoven brings out that much maligned instrument, the bassoon, for a rapt dialogue with the soloist, and breaks away from it, by what seems an unwilling effort, for the last vigorous bars.
The slow movement is a set of variations in G major; the loveliest variation of all has no literal connection with the theme, but is simply a rhapsodic interpolation of heavenly eloquence. Here again Beethoven’s orchestra is far from inclined to break the spell; it signals the soloist to take the second cadenza, and he leads the way directly to the Rondo.
The point of this tune is the alternation of tonic D and dominant A (compare this with the timpani part at the beginning of the first movement), and the comic possibilities of the alternation. There is jovial good humour in the bassoon’s duet with the soloist during the second episode of the Rondo. The setting of the Rondo theme itself has enough room between the top line and the bass to drive a fair-sized coach and four. The space is intensified after the cadenza, when the basses rouse themselves, like Saint-Saëns‘ elephants, underneath violin trills. How the concerto ends is another Beethoven joke: love and friendship alike thrive on laughter as well as tenderness.
Note © William Mann 1959

Artykuł BEETHOVEN<be />Violin Concerto in D major, Op.61<br />David Oistrakh, Andre Cluytens<br />French National Radio Orchestra pochodzi z serwisu Cleartone.