Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77
Johannes Brahms
b. Hamburg, Germany / May 7, 1833
d. Vienna, Austria / April 3, 1897
For Brahms, as it had been for Beethoven, a concerto was no less weighty and important than a symphony. Not for him the flashy, empty solo vehicles written by most composers of his day. Each of his four concertos – two for piano, one for violin, and one for violin and cello – is a substantial work drawn on a large canvas.
By the time he came to compose his Violin Concerto in 1878, he and Joseph Joachim had been friends for years. One of the most outstanding musicians of the era, Joachim won fame as violinist, chamber musician, conductor, and composer. Like Brahms, he wore conservative musical colors, favoring Classical poise and purity over Romantic excess. It was Joachim’s advocacy of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, for example, that had finally convinced listeners of its worth.
It is no surprise that Brahms took the Beethoven Violin Concerto as the model for his own, and that he consulted Joachim on the technical aspects of the solo part. Yet its creation was no mere act of imitation. Although it shares the earlier piece’s breadth and its serene mood, it couldn’t have been written by anyone but Brahms.
In 1876, he finally finished his first symphony, some 20 years after beginning it. Once it had been successfully launched, he heaved a great sigh of relief. Symphony No. 2 and the Violin Concerto, the relaxed and contented pieces which followed soon afterwards, are the musical products of his new-found self-confidence. With Joachim as soloist, and Brahms himself conducting, the Concerto received its premiere in Leipzig on New Year’s Day, 1879.
The warm, expansive introduction to the opening movement sets the tone and scale for the entire segment. Beethoven-esque in scale and ambition, the movement nevertheless bears Brahms’s own stamps of urgency and lyricism. An especially dramatic passage sets up the solo cadenza, which as expected is substantial rather than showy. The heartfelt slow movement begins sweetly and quietly with a spotlight on the wind section. The solo oboe emerges with the lovely, expressive main theme, which is eventually taken up and elaborated by the soloist. A limited amount of emotional heat is generated, but it dissolves back into the opening serene reverie. The Finale is also reserved, at least in comparison with contemporary concertos such as Tchaikovsky’s. The recurring refrain is a jovial, heavy-footed peasant dance in the Hungarian/Gypsy style so beloved of the composer. This is the most technically demanding section of the Concerto, but as always vulgar display never overwhelms good taste and musical substance.
Symphony No. 2 in B minor
Alexander Borodin
b. St. Petersburg, Russia / November 12, 1833
d. St. Petersburg / February 27, 1887
Borodin belonged to a circle of five composers who dedicated themselves to carrying on Mikhail Glinka’s pioneering efforts in using Russian folk song as a source or pattern for music for the concert hall and opera house. He earned a living as a professor of chemistry and medicine. The disorganized but sweet and generous temperament of this self-proclaimed “Sunday composer” also contributed to the slimness of his musical catalogue. The works he did complete display exceptional melodic charm (often with an appealing Oriental tang, reflecting his family pedigree) and sensuous, poetic beauty.
In typical fashion, Borodin required many years’ sporadic labor to complete his Second Symphony. He began composing it in 1869, in the flush of the successful debut of Symphony No. 1, but he didn’t complete it until 1876. “The St. Petersburg Musical Society has designated my Second Symphony for performance at one of its concerts,” he wrote to a friend in January 1877. “I was in the country and knew nothing about it. I come home and – boom! – I can’t find the first movement or the Finale. The score is lost. I packed them away somewhere. I look. I look but cannot find them anywhere. And the Musical Society is meanwhile making demands; it’s time to get the parts copied. What to do? And to top it off, I get sick: inflammation of the lymphatic ducts in my leg. There is nothing for it but to reorchestrate. So there I am lying in bed with fever, and sketching the score in pencil.
“Still and all, I did not make the deadline for the fourth subscription concert: the parts were not ready. This Symphony is truly dogged by fate. So it seems (though I’m not sure) that it will get on the fifth concert – next Friday – which leaves me in a position in which, most likely, not a single professor of the Imperial Medical Surgical Academy has ever been before; two of my symphonies will be given in one week – the First at the Free Music School on the 25th and the B Minor at the Musical Society in the 28th.” The premiere of the Second was in fact postponed until February 22, 1877. Eduard Nápravnik conducted. Borodin revised the Symphony shortly thereafter, and dedicated it to his wife, Yekaterina.
It included material that he originally intended for his magnum opus, the historical opera Prince Igor. He had temporarily set the opera aside – and he never did finish it. He may have had a similarly heroic program in mind for the Symphony. A friend, author Vladimir Stasov, recalled, “Borodin himself once told me that in the Adagio (third movement), he wanted to draw the figure of a bayan, an epic bard; in the first movement, a gathering of bogatyrs (Russian warriors); in the Finale, a scene of heroic feasting to the sound of the gusli, the bardic psaltery, while a great popular throng rejoices.”
Opening in a mood of solemnity, the first movement presents heroic declamations and bustling energy, laced with an appealing strain of lyricism. The scherzo-like second movement offers fairy-tale scenes. The outer panels are brisk and playful; the central Trio glows with wistful, elfin sweetness. Solo horn introduces the haunting main theme of the slow, rhapsodic third movement. It builds to a passionately expressive climax, out of which the galloping rhythms of the celebratory, dance-like Finale emerge without pause.
Marche Slave (Slavonic March), Op. 31
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
b. Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia / May 7, 1840
d. St. Petersburg, Russia / November 6, 1893
Several of Tchaikovsky’s earlier works, such as this rousing march, use traditional melodies as their building blocks. War broke out between Turkey and the Balkan states of Serbia and Montenegro during the summer of 1876. By autumn, Russian troops were streaming to reinforce the Balkan side. In Moscow, the Russian Musical Society organized a concert to raise funds for the Slavonic Charity Committee’s work on behalf of the Russian combatants. Conductor Nikolai Rubinstein asked Tchaikovsky to compose a new work along patriotic lines to be premiered at the event. In just five days, Tchaikovsky completed the thrilling Marche Slave. He based it on three Serbian folk songs and God Save the Tsar, the Russian national anthem (which he quoted again in the 1812 Overture). The premiere of the March, at the charity concert on November 17 under Rubinstein’s direction, won such an enthusiastic reception that it had to be encored immediately.
© 2008 Don Anderson. All rights reserved.
