A Demented Violin Concerto

Well, is it any good or is it—as Menuhin thought—a historical footnote, the missing link in the violin repertoire?

Yehudi Menuhin, one of the great violinists of the last century, was referring to the Schumann violin concerto, which dates from 1853—a year before Schumann gave in to syphilitic madness and jumped into the Rhine. Fearing that he would harm his wife, the pianist Clara Schumann who had long supported him creatively and financially, he asked the fisherman who rescued him to take him directly to the sanatorium. He died in 1856.

That’s part of the story. The other part? Joseph Joachim, a friend of both the Schumanns and Johannes Brahms, and the greatest violinist of his day. And so the concerto was written for Joachim, who played through it, and was less than impressed. In fact, he suspected the music was part of Schumann’s madness; allegedly, he called the work morbid. And he wrote the following words in a letter to a friend:

The piece has ‘a certain exhaustion, which attempts to wring out the last resources of spiritual energy’, though ‘certain individual passages bear witness to the deep feelings of the creative artist’.

Joachim never played the work in public, and later convinced both Brahms and Clara Schumann that the work wasn’t worthy of publication. Joachim kept the manuscript, and left it in his will to the Prussian State Library, with the instruction that it was not to be played until 1956, 100 years after the composer’s death..

OK—here the story gets seriously weird. Two grandnieces of Joachim—one improbably named Jelly D’Aranyi, the other Adila Fachiri—both violinists, decide to go to a séance in London in 1933. And guess who comes sailing through? Yup—Robert Schumann with instructions from the beyond. Yeah—“play my concerto,” or words to that effect.

First problem—where the hell was it? OK—round two, and this time Joachim comes through with the info. And so the sisters hightail it over to the archives and dig the concerto up. And they swear until their dying day that they had no idea that the piece existed.

(….stop that sniggering out there!)

The trail went cold until 1937, when the music publisher Schott sent the manuscript to Yehudi Menuhin. And he announced that he would give the world premiere in San Francisco.

You can guess what happened. Yes, Jelly stepped up and claimed right of first performance—hadn’t it been she who had been tipped off from the beyond? (You might wonder why Adila, the other sister, didn’t stake her claim—at least, I wonder…. Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn’t say…)

It might have been interesting to see how the struggle developed—but sadly, the Germans held the copyright, and they decided it should be one of their own, Georg Kulenkampff, should premiere the work. So Menuhin gave the American premiere, and Jelly gave the London premiere—one critic said, “of this dismal fiasco, the less said the better.”

Since then, the work has met with divided opinion. Some have called it a violin concerto without the violin. And one senses what Joachim felt—it’s the work of a man whose mind is slipping. It may lack coherence, ultimately; but there are still beautiful moments.

In short, it’s a thing to hear….

    

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.

Brahms Voiced

She wore the glorious crown of her voice with the grace of an empress and changed the lives of many through the subtle force of her spirit and demeanor. If the planet Earth could sing, I think it would sound something like Marian Anderson.

Right—you get that said about you, and you can go home and kick back with a beer. Add to the fact that the words are Jessye Norman’s—for decades the preeminent alto of her time—and there’s not much more to be said.

And will that stop me?

To say that she broke barriers is understatement. Anderson was born in Philadelphia; her mother was a teacher, her father sold ice and coal. Her grandfather had been a slave and seen emancipation in the 1860’s.

The family was religious; she sang in the church choir, and then sang solos in black churches around the city. There was no money for high school, at first, so she busied herself with her church, which eventually raised the funds for her to attend school; the principal of the school found a voice teacher. She was 24 when she finally finished high school.

And met with a slap—the director of admissions at the Philadelphia Music Academy didn’t mince words: “we don’t take colored.”

Bemused Reader, it was a different time. A time, for example, when no hotel would rent a room to a black person. So the black community, among others, opened their homes; when Anderson needed a place to stay in Princeton, Albert Einstein took her in, and they became close friends.

She studied in New York, won a competition with the New York Philharmonic in 1925, and then took off for Europe. There, she was enthusiastically received, especially in Scandinavia; for most of the 20’s and 30’s, she toured Europe.

It’s almost a shame that the incident with the DAR and the Constitution Hall occurred, since it’s the one story about Anderson that everybody knows. For those who don’t—here goes. The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to rent their hall to Anderson, because she was black. Eleanor Roosevelt resigned, sent the organization a scorching letter, and arranged for Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial. 75,000 people came to the concert, millions listened on the radio. Seldom has a bird been flipped more graciously.

Which could be the word for Anderson—she put up with it all, and never bore a grudge. A few years later, she sang at Constitution Hall at the invitation of the DAR, and later recalled no feeling of revenge or victory. It was just another hall. Nor does she harbor any ill will at the Connecticut farmers that withdrew their property from sale when she went looking for a farm. She went right on, and then ingratiated herself with the community, singing Christmas carols at the lighting of the tree, never jumping in line in the stores even when offered to do so.

She was, in short, a thorough, complete lady. But most of all, she was an amazing singer with an impressive, rich voice. Distinctive as well—once you hear it a few times, you’ll never forget it.

And she brings a lovely, old school approach to these songs by Brahms, which are his only songs that have another instrument besides the piano. They’re special—Brahms composed the first for a dear friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim and his wife, an alto. The couple was expecting their first child. So Brahms wrote a lullaby, one of the tenderest pieces he would ever compose, and the three performed it in private: Brahms at the piano, Joachim on the viola, Amalie singing. The music meant so much to Brahms that he decided not publish it; it was private, and a gift.

Two decades later, Joachim’s marriage collapsed, he suspected Amalie of infidelity and filed for divorce. Brahms stupidly got in the middle, wrote a letter to Amalie expressing his belief in her innocence; Amalie introduces the letter in court. Anguished, Brahms wrote a companion song, in an attempt to breach the gap.

It took more than a song to heal the wounds; it took, in fact, the Double Concerto for violin and cello, and even then, the relationship never got completely back.

Anderson’s performance is just breath-taking, as is that of William Primrose, the violist. A perceptive viewer on YouTube made the comment—Primrose sounds like a contralto, Anderson sounds like a viola. It’s a completely satisfying performance….