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| Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) |
It makes perfect sense that the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto has become, in this age, a virtual calling card for brilliant young violinists.
Arguably the most popular of all violin concertos, it has never quite maintained the academic respect or the profound admiration reserved for the concertos of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Stravinsky, Bartok, or even Berg.
There's an air of sheer excitement about the Tchaikovsky concerto that has always raised suspicions - the exhilarating swing of its mood, its blistering intensity, its voluptuous beauty, its dancing abandon - and it has suffered the somewhat patronizing attitude accorded much of the composer's work. This was true in a sense from the beginning, when Tchaikovsky couldn't even convince the concerto's original dedicatee to perform it. Here is the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, responding with cold fury to the premiere performance in 1881: "The violin is no longer played, it is yanked about, it is torn asunder, it is beaten black and blue...... it has an audibly, odorously Russian stench...... a rare mix of originality and crudity, of inspiration and wretched refinement ...... Tchaikovsky's violin concerto brings us for the first time to the horrid idea that there may be music that stinks to the ear." (The piano concerto, which premiered in 1875, was also treated the same.)
The youthful Adolf Brodsky used the concerto as the vehicle for his Vienna debut that evening, discovering it after the great virtuoso Leopold Auer - to whom Tchaikovsky wanted to dedicate it - stalled, then finally refused to accept the work because of its extreme difficulty. "Unviolinistic," Auer called it. Since that time, the concerto has become a cornerstone of the violin repertory. Auer's frustration over the score's considerable technical demands has given way to the sheer relish with which violinists, especially young ones, address this magnificent musical steeplechase.
The late Dorothy DeLay of the Julliard School of Music, and she agreed that the Tchaikovsky concerto is a landmark in the careers of many young violinists.
She said simply, "I think they like very much...... an imaginative violinist always finds something pure and liberating in a work as familiar even as this one."
Tchaikovsky was 38 when he began work on his violin concerto. His disastrous marriage had collapsed the year before, leading to his most profound fit of despair yet and an attempt at suicide. On his doctor's advice, he left Russia to travel abroad. Settling with his brother Anatol in a Swiss retreat at Clarens on Lake Geneva, Tchaikovsky quickly regained his equilibrium, finishing the Fourth Symphony and the score for the opera Eugen Onegin there and on a visit to Italy. It was on his return from Italy, in high spirits, that he welcomed a visit from a young violinist named Joseph Kotek, a student of Brahms' friend Joseph Joachim and a friend of Mme. Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky's new patroness. Together, they played through a number of new works and the composer was particularly taken with the colorful, concerto-like Symphonie Espagnole of the French composer Edouard Lalo. So energized was Tchaikovsky - by the Lalo, by kotek's visit, by Switzerland and Italy, by the fresh promise of life itself - that he set out to write his own violin concerto.
He worked with breathtaking speed, completing the entire work in a matter of weeks in March and April of 1878. Kotek assisted him with the violin part, leading the composer to challenge the very limits of virtuosity. A first draft of the concerto left Kotek and the composer's brother Modeste "enraptured," especially with the extroverted first and third movements. The original slow movement was ultimately rejected (it exists as the "Meditation" from the Souvenir d' un lieu cher, op.42), and - in one day - Tchaikovsky came up with an alternative, the wistful canzonetta that leads without pause into the final movement. The orchestration was finished on April 11. In a letter to Mme. von Meck on April 29, Tchaikovsky said he was satisfied with the new Andante and he declared the work finished.
In the wake of Auer's rejection of the work and its dedication, Tchaikovsky was boldly promised by Kotek that he would premiere the concerto in St.Petersburg. Gossip quickly reminded Kotek what a bad career move this would be, and he recanted his promise, damaging forever his relationship with the composer.
Tchaikovsky had all but given up on the piece and was full of gratitude when he learned that the 31-year-old Brodsky had taken it up and would play it in Vienna.
The concerto opens with an arresting melody that is never heard again. The orchestra then sketches the first theme, which is richly taken up by the solo violin and elaborated on at some length. The second, contrasting theme is broad and soulful, returning in the development to contrast the feistiness of the first theme, heard in the full orchestra virtually as a vibrant polonaise. the cadenza appears before the recapitulation and a brief coda.
The mood changes dramatically in the Andante, with a gentle 12-bar introduction to a melancholy principal melody sung bu the solo violin. A slight shift in the atmosphere comes with an almost affectionate contrasting theme but, as the principal theme is recalled, the repose is shattered as the final movement vigorously announces itself without pause. After an introduction and a brief cadenza from the solo violin, the dominant dance-like theme - modeled on the Russian trepak - is unleashed.
The second theme, announced by the violin over a drone-like bass, provides a moment of relative, still pulsating calm bathed in the Russian-gypsy style fashionable in Europe when Tchaikovsky was at work. But the principal theme returns, evolving with even greater intensity, and it hurls the concerto to an explosive, breathtaking conclusion.
This concerto have been released thousand of CD by violinists, and still played all over the world. Nowadays I think that Eduard Hanslick and Leopold Auer's criticisms is really ridiculous. They said it Unviolinistic concerto, where was the violinistic violin concerto like this concerto?!
I think Beethoven's violin concerto is not violinistic. Ludwig's violin concerto is like the piano - especially 1 movement.
I've chosen the violinists I like to choose from. Below is their link.
Jascha Heifetz, the idol of all violinists, he was a student of Auer.
https://youtu.be/kFaq9kTlcaY
David Oistrach, has a warm and beautiful tone color.
https://youtu.be/fNCeYKfAOZI
Nathan Milstein, one of the finest violinists of the 20th century.
https://youtu.be/sbI2O00BnUQ
Frank Peter Zimmerman, a German violinst alive
https://youtu.be/YGjA4eReS5w
Vadim Rapin, a Russian violinist alive
https://youtu.be/L1zr_lUvWWs
Sarah Chang, ennobles the line of youthful champions of the work
that began in Vienna in 1881 with Adolf Brodsky.
This was played at the age of 11.
https://youtu.be/sjPBkATHlgM
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