Vadim Repin, violin
Born in Siberia in 1971, Vadim Repin started to play violin at the age of five and six months later had his first stage performance. At only eleven he won the gold medal in all age categories in the Wienawski Competition and gave his recital debuts in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In 1985 at fourteen he made his debuts in Tokyo, Munich, Berlin, Helsinki; a year later in Carnegie Hall. Two years later Vadim Repin was the youngest ever winner of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition.
Since then he has performed with the world’s greatest orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, NDR Hamburg, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Philharmonia, Royal Concertgebouw, San Francisco Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, and La Scala, working with the most prestigious conductors.
He has been a frequent guest at festivals such as Tanglewood, Ravinia, Rheingau, Gstaad, Verbier and the BBC Proms. Summer 2009 featured Repin in his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in a performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto conducted by Leonard Slatkin, as well as an appearance at Tanglewood with the Beethoven Violin Concerto under Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos. The current season brings Vadim Repin to orchestral engagements in North America, Europe, Asia and the Pacific.
Mr. Repin regularly collaborates with Nikolai Lugansky and Itamar Golan in recital, and the 2008/9 season was marked by some twenty-five recitals. Other highlights from last season included tours with the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev and collaborations with Christian Thielemann, Gustavo Dudamel and Jonathan Nott.
In January 2008, Vadim Repin played Saint-Saens Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso in Beijing under Ozawa to mark the opening of the new National Performing Arts Center. In May 2008, he performed the Bruch Violin Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle in Moscow on the occasion of Europe Day – a concert broadcast live throughout Europe. Later that month he was in Tel Aviv, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel with the Israel Philharmonic and Riccardo Muti.
Recordings are available on the Warner Classics, Deutsche Grammophon and ECM labels. He plays on the 1736 ‘Von Szerdahely’ by Guarneri del Gesù.
Ludwig van Beethoven, Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61
Premiered on December 23, 1806, at Theater an der Wien. Franz Clement, soloist and conductor.
The original manuscript of this concerto is a puzzle. Aside from numerous corrections and alternative sketches, it contains two different versions for the soloist, and the first printed edition presents a third one. The composer’s original thoughts were probably influenced by the soloist’s suggestions, technically simpler, and later on by his publisher.
The premiere, indeed, was not a success. Contemporary critics of Beethoven agreed that it was not possible to appreciate his compositions at first hearing. The great majority of his listeners were shocked, “overcome by the incoherent and excessive ideas,” “troubled by the unfamiliar sounds” and by “the crude, wild and extraneous harmonies.” In other words, Beethoven’s works, breaking free from the conventional frames of his time, puzzled critics as much as listeners. They would need time to tune their ears in order to find music in Beethoven’s sounds.
The reviewer from the Viennese Zeitung für Theater, Musik und Poesie wrote:
The verdict of the cognoscenti is unanimous: they concede that it has some beauty, but maintain that the continuity is often completely fragmented, and that the endless repetition of come commonplace passages might easily prove wearisome. They assert that Beethoven could put his undoubtedly great talents to better use.
Even so, the critics of the time weren’t quite wrong. Beethoven completed the work at the last moment; the score looks like a sketch with a mass of corrections. No wonder the soloist had little time to learn his part, and no time at all to rehearse it with the orchestra. It was sight-reading, and the audience didn’t appreciate it. In such conditions, even the most beautiful music runs the risk of disappointing. In the following decades the concerto was almost forgotten, until 1844, when the young violinist Joseph Joachim, with an orchestra conducted by Mendelssohn, took the work on a European tour and gained new popularity for it. Since then, it has become one of the touchstones of the violin concerto repertoire.
The work breaks with classical Viennese tradition, asserting its own style, marked by the “Eroica” Symphony (1803), the “Waldstein” and “Appassionata” piano sonatas (1803-05), the Fourth Piano Concerto (1805-06) and the opera Fidelio (1805). Beethoven would work on several pieces at the same time; the Violin Concerto’s autograph is sprinkled with sketches of his Symphony No. 5 (1806). Moreover, following the suggestion of the publisher and pianist Muzio Clementi, the composer revised his Violin Concerto in a version for piano and orchestra (1808), whose first sketches were also found in the margins of the original manuscript.
While Beethoven’s piano concertos follow in greater or lesser degree Mozart’s trail, his Violin Concerto has no model, although he was familiar with the repertoire for stringed instruments, French and Italian alike. The work certainly disturbed his audience, with its unusual, vast proportions and musical depth, strikingly different from earlier pieces of its kind. The concerto, far removed from virtuosity and without bravura effects to win over the public, was conceived by Beethoven in a new light, as serious and dramatic as his symphonies. Nevertheless, the solo violin is accompanied by a chamber orchestra, consisting of strings, woodwinds, pairs of horns and trumpets, and timpani.
An expansive orchestral introduction presents the themes of the first movement, Allegro ma non troppo, opening with five soft beats on the timpani that will permeate the whole movement. The pulsing sounds introduce the first theme, played by the woodwinds in consecutive thirds, announcing the character of the piece, serene and reflective, with a touch of sadness. The growing intensity of the orchestra prepares the soloist’s restatement of the theme. The timpani beats herald the second theme, in a minor key, vigorous and dynamic, participating in the vast development dominated by the solo violin. The traditional recapitulation ends with a cadenza, which Beethoven himself never wrote, leaving to the performer the freedom to compose his own bravura piece, as was the custom before his time. Several great violinists, past and present, have provided cadenzas for this concerto, among them Joseph Joachim, Fritz Kreisler and Wolfgang Schneiderhan, as well as composer Alfred Schnittke. For this performance, the soloist has chosen Kreisler’s cadenza.
The slow movement, Larghetto, is a romance constructed as a theme and variations, whose transformations make extensive use of orchestral colors. Various instruments (horn, clarinet, bassoon) repeat the theme literally, leaving to the soloist the subtle figurations of the melody. The light accompaniment of muted strings emphasizes the violin solo and its song. This romance reaches the highest level in compositional skill, developing various aspects of the unique musical idea without transforming its melody, rhythm or harmony. The concluding cadenza leads into the sparkling Rondo Allegro. Dancing on a folk-like melody introduced by the soloist, this rondo dissipates the dream-like mood of the romance with its earthy character. The orchestra follows the violin in a dialogue with the ritornello episodes, playing a number of other themes, most notably the lyrical one in G minor divided between violin and bassoon. Finally, the solo violin embroiders with melodic arabesques, leading to a short cadenza, and together with the orchestra brings the concerto to its brilliant conclusion.
* * *
Johannes Brahms, Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68
The first performance took place in Karlsruhe on November 4, 1876, with Otto Dessoff conducting.
Why compose symphonies after Beethoven?
Brahms needed twenty years of sketches and various experiences in orchestra writing (his Op. 11 and Op. 16 Serenades, First Piano Concerto, Op. 15, German Requiem, Op. 45), before he felt ready to leave the shadow of Beethoven behind and build his own style.
Brahms worked on his Symphony No. 1 sporadically. The first movement was completed as early as 1862 and sent to Clara Schumann, his friend and best critic. The next time she received news about it was six years later: he send her a birthday card with the horn call from the last movement. Finally, some eight years after that, in 1876, Brahms played for Clara the whole work at the piano.
Time was on his side, rewarding the composer’s long efforts. It gave him valuable experience in orchestration and mastery of large forms. Eduard Hanslick, the famous Vienna critic, wrote after the concert:
Seldom, if ever, has the entire musical world awaited a composer’s first symphony with such tense anticipation. The new symphony is so fervent and complex, so unconcerned with common effects, that it hardly lends itself to easy understanding…even the layman will immediately recognize it as one of the most magnificent works in the symphonic literature.
The first performance in Karlsruhe was a triumph, acclaimed by the audience and critics. The influential conductor Hans von Bülow proclaimed it “the Tenth,” referring, of course, to Beethoven, an honor that no other composer would dare expect.
However, in other countries, audiences were rather reluctant. Brahms’s symphony would wait a long time before it became part of the repertoire. Critics outside Germanic countries were uncompromising: the C-minor Symphony “sounds for the most part morbid, strained and unnatural; much of it even ugly”; “poor in ideas,” it is “full of irritant and restless discords; it has strange, climbing, grasping phrases.” Moreover, Brahms’s music was qualified as the “modern of the moderns,” which, in the context, was far from being a compliment (Boston Daily Advertiser, 1878). According to the Evening Transcript, there were doubts “whether Brahms’s music would ever become popular… It must be admitted that to the larger part of our public, Brahms is still an incomprehensible terror” (Boston, 1888).
It’s hardly a surprise. Since Beethoven’s time, concert-goers as well as critics have not appreciated unfamiliar music, which has often been perceived as offensive or meaningless, with non-conformist works subject to this sort of reactionary comment. However, it is true that Brahms was not seeking to please his audience with pretty sounds: “My symphony is long,” he said, “and not exactly loveable.”
Composed on the traditional model of four movements, the symphony is build on contrasting themes and dramatic conflict, highlighted by masterly orchestration. As in the last of Beethoven’s symphonies, all the thematic material is outlined in the opening movement, progressively shifting in emphasis to the last. The listener, today, is impressed by the thematic unity, dramatic strength and lyrical intensity, which make it a true masterpiece.
An echo of the Beethoven timpani that opened the Violin Concerto, the first movement, Un poco sostenuto - Allegro, announces its dramatic soundscape with the powerful pounding of percussion. After the slow introduction, the exposition of a sonata form suddenly begins with the tense, dark main theme, first heard in the violins, then amplified in the orchestra. The second theme – a melody in triplets – appears at the very end of the exposition, leading to the development, which brings a striking change of mood. The two thematic lines are entwined above the light accompaniment of the orchestra. A long ostinato pedal held by the timpani and a chromatic horn transition announce the recapitulation, stretched to a great length. Near the end, Brahms introduces a mysterious episode in B-flat minor, delaying the conclusion and producing a dramatic final effect with luminous chords in C major.
The two contrasting inner movements are calm and relatively short, more suited to a serenade with their intimate and light character. Both are in the symmetric tripartite form of song.
After the dark, stormy Allegro, an Andante sostenuto brings calm and serenity. Strings sing a simple, lyrical melody in a dialogue with oboe, clarinet and flute, before a new, tempestuous episode recalls the opening movement. It comes to rest with a duet between violin and horn.
The third movement, Un poco allegretto e grazioso, is an intermezzo, warm and gentle, very close to Brahms’s piano miniatures. Two flowing melodies are traded playfully between strings and woodwinds, surrounding the more animated middle section in a minor key. It concludes in a light mood.
The immense finale, Adagio – Più andante – Allegro non troppo, ma con brio – Più Allegro, begins with a vast introduction, leading towards a horn call enhanced by a majestic trombone chorale. Then follows the bright C-major principal theme, reminiscent of the famous “Ode to Joy,” a homage to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. The woodwinds develop it in a stormy episode, before the choral (horn call) returns to close the exposition. The development focuses on the contrapuntal climax of the main theme, and the horn call appears announcing the recapitulation. The brass chorale (echo of the work’s opening) and the strings with the grand theme culminate in a flamboyant coda.
Eduard Hanslick was right, indeed: it is one of the most magnificent works in the orchestral literature.
Dujka Smoje
Honorary professor
Faculté de Musique
Université de Montréal |
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