To Beethoven via South Korea

I read recently that nineteenth-century violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim had said, “The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven's. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart's jewel, is Mendelssohn's.

I know them, but curiously hardly ever hear them. Why? Well, one of the paradoxes of classical music is that when a piece gets played often enough, it gains “warhorse” status, and people then tend to shun it. Think I’m wrong? When was the last time you heard Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony?

Of the four concerti, Beethoven’s is the oldest and—some would argue—the best. It’s also fiendishly difficult: the violin has to go into the stratosphere and still be utterly lyrical. It’s therefore almost unbelievable that Beethoven gave the part to the violinist Franz Clement so late that Clement was sight-reading (that is, playing it for the first time) at the first performance. That may have been why Clement chose to play a little ditty for one string with his violin held upside down between the first and second movements. In fairness, breaking up movements was a fairly common practice at the time; earlier generations were less fussy in those days.

At any rate, the debut was not a great success, and the concerto went essentially un-played for a couple of decades, when it was revived by a twelve-year old Joachim with Mendelssohn conducting.

It’s a typical concerto—nothing revolutionary here. OK—it’s a little weird to have those four somber timpani notes starting the whole thing, but other than that, it’s fairly traditional. It starts out with the orchestra playing the tutti, which introduces the principal themes, as well as giving the soloist time to fully feel his dry mouth, sweaty hands, and churning stomach. Then we get the soloist coming in, and playing a miniature cadenza—a solo passage which is or should feel improvised and which, generally, is highly virtuosic. There’s nothing virtuosic here, it’s mainly meant to tease—when is the violinist gonna get down to business and play us some tunes?

He or she does for about twenty minutes—Beethoven takes his sweet time wrapping this thing up. And the first movement ends with a true, fiery cadenza. The second movement is Beethoven at his most lyric, and the third movement—which is connected to the second, a typical Beethoven trick—is almost fatally a rondo.

A good blogger would look it up, and give you the formula for the damn thing—it goes something like aabbaaccaaddaa and then—at last—the end. So the first problem is that you’re gonna hear the aa six zillion times. The second problem is that the tunes chosen by the composer tend to be mildly irritating at the start, so by the end? You’ll be gagging.

And Beethoven, with all his skill, comes very close to not pulling it off. He has, however, to his aid an incredible violinist, Kyung-wha Chung. Chung has quite a story—her mother was a singer, and two of her siblings are professional musicians as well. So she grew up playing with her cellist sister and pianist brother, and was famous in South Korea, their home. From there, it was off to Julliard, where she had two major challenges—Juilliard was filled with child prodigies as good as she, and her teacher, the famous and feared Ivan Galamian, didn’t think much of female violinists. He thought she’d make an orchestra violinist, not a soloist.

The life of a conservatory student took its toll on Chung. Although she was fiendishly disciplined, she grew depressed: other people were dating, having fun, dancing in clubs. She was practicing every waking moment; despondent, she considered giving up the violin.

The family reacted by having an emergency meeting. They decided: Chung would enter the prestigious Edgar Leventritt Violin Competition. If she didn’t win, she could give up. If she won, she’d go on. She told Galamian, who adored her, but feared she would be lost to marriage.

He was also teaching a kid named Pinchas Zuckerman, who had the chromosome that Chung lacked. So, she didn’t get much support. Oh, except for her mother, who sold the family home to buy a Stradivarius for the event.

She didn’t win—she did something better. She tied with Zuckerman, the first time that any two people had been declared winners; some years, no one wins the thing if the judges don’t feel there’s anybody up to snuff.

Zuckerman’s career took off; hers languished. And then, she got a break—Zuckerman’s wife was giving birth, and Chung was asked to step in. She prepared the Tchaikovsky concerto, the orchestra played the Mendelssohn, instead. Right, so she could do that—they prep you for stuff like that in Juilliard. She played it perfectly, and the London Symphony Orchestra, which thought she was a lightweight, was impressed.

In the clip below, she’s at the peak of her career, and playing with a wonderful orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, with Klauss Tennstedt as conductor. The orchestra has this wonderful, rich sound; Chung goes from fiery virtuosity to almost unbearable tenderness. It’s a knockout.