Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 77
Related Artists/Companies
Johannes BrahmsPast Performances
WPAS: Philadelphia Orchestra - Apr 19, 2004 at 8:00 PM
National Symphony Orchestra Osmo Vanska, conductor/Lisa Batiashvili, violin - Mar 3 - 5, 2005
About the Composition
"The healthy and ruddy colors of his skin indicated a love of nature and a habit of being in the open air in all kinds of weather; his thick straight hair of brownish color came nearly down to his shoulders. His clothes and boots were not of exactly the latest pattern, nor did they fit particularly well, but his linen was spotless.... [There was a] kindliness in his eyes ... with now and then a roguish twinkle in them which corresponded to a quality in his nature which would perhaps be best described as good-natured sarcasm." So wrote Sir George Henschel, the singer and conductor who became the first Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, of his friend Johannes Brahms at the time of the composition of his Violin Concerto. Brahms at 45 was coming into the full efflorescence of his talent and fame. The twenty-year gestation of the First Symphony had finally ended in 1876, and the Second Symphony came easily only a year later. He was occupied with many songs and important chamber works during the years of the mid-1870s, and the two greatest of his concertos, the B-flat for piano and the D major for violin, were both conceived in 1878. Both works were ignited by the delicious experience of his first trip to Italy in April of that year, though the Piano Concerto was soon laid aside when the Violin Concerto became his main focus during the following summer. After the Italian trip, he returned to the idyllic Austrian village of Pörtschach (site of the composition of the Second Symphony the previous year), where, he wrote to the critic Eduard Hanslick, "the air so bristles with melodies that one has to be careful not to tread on them."The Violin Concerto was written at Pörtschach specifically for Brahms' old friend and musical ally, Joseph Joachim. In August, when the sketches for the new work were almost completed, Brahms sent a draft of the solo part to Joachim for his advice on the technical aspects of the violin writing with the following note: "I wanted you to correct it — and I didn't want you to have any excuse of any kind: either that the music is too good [to be changed] or that the whole score isn't worth the trouble. But I shall be satisfied if you just write me a word or two, and perhaps write a word here and there in the music, like ‘difficult,' ‘awkward,' ‘impossible,' etc." Joachim took great pains in examining the score (his notated copy is still in the State Library in Berlin), and passed his advice on to Brahms who, rather obstinately, ignored most of it. Brahms, whose instrument was the piano rather than the violin, made a few changes in the musical aspects of the score, but left the sometimes ambiguous string notation largely untouched, a circumstance that has caused considerable interpretative difficulties for other violinists.
Brahms originally envisioned the Violin Concerto as a four-movement work. He composed a scherzo and a slow movement for it, but decided to jettison them for reasons he did not reveal. "The middle movements have gone, and of course they were the best!" he wrote. He was probably being facetious about the quality of the discarded music because he continued, "But I have written a poor Adagio for it instead," referring to one of the most beautiful slow movements in the orchestral literature. The fate of the unused movements has never been exactly determined. The scherzo may have ended up as material for the Second Piano Concerto; the Adagio may have been the basis of the present one in the Violin Concerto; or both movements may have been lost amid the aborted plans for a second violin concerto. (Brahms was rigidly systematic in destroying scores he did not want others to see.) His revisions proved effective, and after the Concerto was launched, he wrote to his publisher, Simrock, "It is well to be doubted whether I could write a better concerto."
The Concerto made its way slowly onto the world's concert stages. Joachim programmed the work regularly as part of his tours, but others were reluctant to take on the imposing technical and musical challenges of the score. Hans von Bülow, a sensitive pianist and conductor who should have known better, dubbed this "a concerto not for the violin, but against the violin." There is no question about the difficulties of the score, especially those that its double-stops and wide skips impose on the left-hand technique of the soloist, but, with familiarity, the rigors of the work were not only conquered but relished by virtuosos. As with many of Brahms' large works, audiences considered this one somewhat dry and pedantic at first, and even the composer's staunch advocate, the noted critic Eduard Hanslick, found little to praise in it. The integration of violinist and orchestra into a virtual "symphony with solo instrument" did not allow the empty pyrotechnics that listeners expected from a Romantic concerto, and the Violin Concerto took some getting used to. Get used to it listeners did, however, and today Brahms' Violin Concerto is regarded as one of the two greatest works in the form ever written, matched only by that of Beethoven.
English musicologist Hubert Foss wrote of the style of the Violin Concerto, "Of all Brahms' major works, this is the one that shows in the highest degree of perfection the reconciling of the two opposites of his creative mind — the lyrical and the constructive: Brahms the song writer and Brahms the symphonist." Though the wealth of formal detail is an inexhaustible treasure which is best appreciated only after many hearings, the work's sonorous beauty, opulent harmony and rich lyricism make an immediate appeal to the listener. The first movement is constructed on the lines of the Classical concerto form, with an extended orchestral introduction presenting much of the movement's main thematic material before the entry of the soloist. The group of themes comprises several ideas that are knitted to each other by the rich contrapuntal flow. They are stately in rhythm and dignified in character, and allow for considerable elaboration when they are treated on their return by the soloist. The last theme, a dramatic strain in stern dotted rhythms, ushers in the soloist, who plays an extended passage as transition to the second exposition of the themes. This initial solo entry is unsettled and anxious in mood and serves to heighten the serene majesty of the main theme when it is sung by the violin upon its reappearance. A melody not heard in the orchestral introduction, limpid and almost a waltz, is given out by the soloist to serve as the second theme. The vigorous dotted-rhythm figure returns to close the exposition, with the development continuing the agitated aura of this closing theme. The recapitulation begins on a heroic wave of sound spread throughout the entire orchestra. After the return of the themes, the bridge to the coda is made by the soloist's cadenza. (Curiously, Brahms did not write his own cadenza for this movement but allowed the soloist to devise one. Joachim provided a cadenza, as have more than a dozen others — including Kreisler, Heifetz, Busoni and Tovey — and it is his that is most often heard in performance.) With another traversal of the main theme and a series of dignified cadential figures, this grand movement comes to an end.
The rapturous second movement is based on a theme that the composer Max Bruch said was derived from a Bohemian folk song. The melody, intoned by the oboe, is initially presented in the colorful sonorities of wind choir without strings. After the violin's entry, the soloist is seldom confined to the exact notes of the theme, but rather weaves a rich embroidery around their melodic shape. The central section of the movement is cast in darker hues, and employs the full range of the violin in its sweet arpeggios. The opening melody returns in the plangent tones of the oboe accompanied by the continuing widely spaced chords of the violinist.
The finale is an invigorating dance whose Gypsy character pays tribute to the two Hungarian-born violinists who played such important roles in Brahms' life: Eduard Reményi, who discovered the talented Brahms playing piano in the bars of Hamburg and first presented him to the European musical community; and Joseph Joachim. The movement is cast in rondo form, with a scintillating tune in double stops as the recurring theme. This movement, the only one in this Concerto given to overtly virtuosic display, forms a memorable capstone to one of the greatest concerted pieces of the 19th century.
John Horton wrote, "That Brahms should have ventured upon a Violin Concerto in D with the sound of Beethoven's, as interpreted by Joachim, in his ears was in itself an act of faith and courage; that he should have produced one of such originality, sturdily independent of its mighty predecessor yet worthy to stand beside it, is one of the triumphs of Brahms' genius."
