Johannes Brahms
Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany
Died April 3, 1897, in Vienna, Austria
Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra in A Minor, Op. 102
I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Vivace non troppo
Composition: summer 1887, on the shores of Lake Thun, Switzerland
Premiere: October 18, 1887, in Cologne, by the two dedicatees and under the direction of the composer
Dedication: to violinist Joseph Joachim and to cellist Robert Hausmann
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, tympani and strings
Timing: about 35 minutes
After devoting four symphonies, two piano concertos, a violin concerto, variations on a theme by Haydn, two overtures and two serenades to the orchestra, Johannes Brahms returned for the last time to the symphonic universe in 1887, almost ten years before his death. What he created was his most unusual work for large forces, a concerto for more than one instrument of a type that had almost disappeared since the end of the baroque period and the concerto grosso, with the notable exception of some concertante symphonies by Haydn and Mozart, as well as Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.
Nevertheless, Brahms’s willingness to dedicate a complete concertante work to a partnership of soloists was not unprecedented, when we remember the third movement of the Piano Concerto No. 2, the Andante, which assigns to the principal cello the important role of engaging in dialogue with the keyboard.
Outside its attention-grabbing nomenclature, the Double Concerto remains a typical work of Brahms’s maturity: austere on the surface, finding refuge (and a serious demeanor) in the constraints of the great form but of an underlying romantic effervescence that shines through in the developments with an enthusiasm that the composer barely manages to contain. In sum, the Apollo-Dionysus duality that alone can sum up the Brahms persona.
In the key of A minor (fairly rare at a time when scores were liberally sprinkled with flats and sharps), a sign of a craving to return to the essence of baroque music, the work honors the classical three-movement configuration. And just as in the piano concerto referred to above, four bars are enough for the orchestra to set the stage.
Of a very Protestant rigor in its unison effect and its implacable affirmation of the harmonic framework, the orchestra in the initial Allegro yields the floor to the soloists almost immediately. And first of all to the cello, which already in this early going is entrusted with a sizeable cadenza. A short motif in the woodwinds brings us to the entry of the violin, its teammate quickly joining in. Only then does a true orchestral exposition begin, followed by the solo developments with their very fine sense of allocation, even if the cello grabs the lion’s share of the thematic material.
The Andante is the occasion for one of the most beautiful meditative pages of the older Brahms, with its soloists’ theme in unison on the lower strings, that abundant breathing, that sense of line writ large, all of it typical of romanticism in its closing days. As for the Finale, Vivace non troppo, it takes its place in the lineage of the Hungarian-esque leanings of a composer who paid tribute to Gypsy music throughout his creative career, even in his sternest works.
Impressed by the performance of his E-Minor Sonata by Robert Hausmann, Brahms first had it in mind to write a concerto intended for the cellist, but in the end opted to compose a new sonata, this time in F major, at whose premiere, in Berlin in 1886, he himself would perform.
Hausmann was, besides, as a member of the celebrated Joachim Quartet, a means to undo the chill between violinist Joseph Joachim and Brahms, friends of long standing engaged in a sort of cold war ever since Brahms had come to the support of Joachim’s wife during divorce proceedings. The Double Concerto therefore has two dedicatees: both of the soloists at the premiere, which took place in Cologne on October 18, 1887. The composer would nonetheless be left with a bitter taste after this final public presentation of an orchestral score of his, the work being greeted with real indifference.
Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky
Born May 7 (April 25 on the Julian calendar),
1840, in Votkinsk, Russia
Died November 6 (October 25),
1893, in Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74 (“Pathétique”)
I. Adagio - Allegro non troppo
II. Allegro con grazia
III. Allegro molto vivace
IV. Finale. Adagio lamentoso
Composition: February-August 1893, in Klin
Premiere: October 28 (16), 1893, in Saint Petersburg under the direction of the composer
Instrumentation: 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam (ad libitum) and strings
Dedication: to Vladimir Davidov
Timing: about 45 minutes
Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky had not yet turned fiftythree when the year 1893 dawned. He was just coming off a pair of premieres at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg: his ballet The Nutcracker
and his last opera, Iolanta, which has since fallen into almost complete oblivion. His final year, in addition to a catalogue of eighteen pieces for piano, six romances for voice and the drafting of a Piano
Concerto No. 3 (which would remain in fragments), he devoted to the composition and preparations for the premiere of his last symphony, a genre he had not supplied with a new opus in close to five years.
While he had tried his hand at a symphony of “pure music” in E-flat major during the autumn, Tchaikovsky now threw aside his sketches in favour of a work with a program that was “highly subjective,
but not revealed – let them guess it who can,” in the tragic key of B minor, the same as that of the Manfred Symphony of 1885.
In his residence in Klin, work moved ahead quickly, even though interrupted by a trip to Moscow; so quickly in fact that at the beginning of summer the only task remaining to the composer
was the orchestration. Tchaikovsky commented: “…from the point of view of form, there will be lots of new things: the Finale, for example, will no longer be a loud allegro but a long adagio.” As soon as he
set down his pen he declared himself to be “more satisfied with this work than with any other.”
In hindsight, we can see the Pathétique as a retrospective on too short a life and one spent in denial of its inner self. Hypersensitive from earliest childhood, connected with every fiber of his being to a distant mother, who died when Piotr was just over fourteen, Tchaikovsky – who would have to struggle all his life not, as is commonly supposed, to hide his homosexuality from his close circle but rather to accept it himself, to the point of endeavoring to cure himself of it by way of a disastrous marriage – here paints his self-portrait.
The first movement, the longest, begins Adagio, at the very edge of silence, through a statement of total desolation contained in a bassoon motif that scarcely gets off the ground before falling into the
void. After a new attempt, hardly more festive, the Allegro non troppo launches into that same motif on the strings before offering a gripping contrast with the entry of the second theme. Its sentimental
lyricism bespeaks the constantly embroiled psychology of the composer: hope mixed with despondency, impulses of the heart held in check by the censure of the head – which must have represented true mental torture on a daily basis.
At the centre of the movement, after a progressive contraction of the orchestral mass, a last phrase remains, on a forlorn clarinet – and then the orchestra delivers a slap in the face that touches off
the beginning of a tug of war worthy of the clashes between the Capulets and the Montagues in the fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet. The music reaches one peak of tension after another, until at
the very pinnacle a fragment from the Russian Orthodox Requiem – “may he rest with the saints” – rings out on the trombones, betraying a deep-seated willingness to live no longer. Here again is the whole wait of fatum, that crushing destiny on shoulders too frail to support it, and which, it is obvious, irrigates the composer’s work as a whole.
And after silence establishes itself once more, the second theme reappears over the dim, uncertain light of the tremolo of strings, in a terrible beatitude given the context, taking the movement to its
conclusion in an atmosphere equal parts resignation and religious consolation, for a certain stretch punctuated by the unruffled pizzicati of the strings.
Clearly more relaxed, the Allegro con grazia that follows is a tribute to the world of the ballet, in which the composer scored some of his greatest successes over the years. A curiously wobbly sort of choreographic tribute, to say the least, with its odd mixture of waltz feel and irregular 5/4 time signature – but a fresh opportunity to reaffirm a genius for melodic sweep. The only shadow in the picture: the pedal D that supports the entire central part, borne here again by a descending motif, recalls the anguish of the opening movement and can, depending on the importance conductors attach to it, take on an obsessive character.
The Allegro molto vivace in third position could very well serve as a Finale in a traditional symphony, so brilliant is it in its vigour, pulsating with its pages of triplet eighth notes in a framework of 12/8 time; so cloudlessly joyous is its trajectory, increasingly virile, built on the most dazzling orchestration imaginable and the feeling of a triumphant march that will yield to nothing. One can also see in it the
overreaching of masculine vigour of an artist ill at ease with his sexuality, and the joy of which may seem forced.
Something grandly and truly new for the period, the Finale, Adagio lamentoso, allows for the return of the true Tchaikovsky, who here writes a farewell of poignant intensity, of an acuteness sometimes close
to unbearable in its irreparable sadness, in the depths of its despair. Also new, something Bruckner and Mahler would remember, that heartrending initial theme in the strings, which belongs to no desk
in particular but is born of the merging of first violins, second violins, violas and cellos, each part when played separately offering at best a very approximate idea of the theme.
As in the first movement, a motif of deeply moving lyricism, in a major key – indisputably the way of the most inconsolable states of mind, despite the legend eruditely perpetuated by so many
teachers of music theory – endeavors to contain the despair. But it is too late.
At the peak of intensity, the brass provide a small sample of the screeching of a universe of damnation, before an almost imperceptible strike of the gong introduces, in a chorale again from the brass, an echo of the Orthodox Requiem heard a half-hour earlier. There follows a very slow, funereal descent into the abyss over a syncopated scraping ostinato on the double basses, finally coming to rest on the last low B in the rediscovered key of B minor.
No doubt weakened by the composer’s modest capabilities as a conductor, the work would be greeted with polite indifference when it premiered on October 28, 1893. A reprise three works later,
with a conductor of good reputation, enjoyed a heartier success. In the meantime, Tchaikovsky, probably bent on suicide resulting from a violation of custom that has never really been fully explained,
according to some reports contracted the cholera that would cost him his life by drinking a glass of unboiled water from the Neva River. Fatum literally poisoned him until the very end.
But fate never stops there. Tchaikovsky’s favourite nephew, Vladimir Davidov, to whom the work was dedicated, would take his own life in December 1906 at the very young age of thirty-five, in the Klin
house he had devoted his efforts to converting into a Tchaikovsky museum.
Yannick MILLON
Translated by Ron Rosenthall |
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