Program Notes: Beethoven Violin Concerto

I have more projects going on right now than I, apparently, can manage. I was in Virginia last week, so I didn’t get to post as much as I would have liked. The weekend was crazy; filled with a picnic, a potluck, a world premiere, and a tour around the Valley with some friends. Today’s post, therefore, is a cop-out. I recently finished my first program of the season for the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. The Beethoven Violin Concerto is an incredible work and the opening piece of the season. I’m sharing my program notes here, in the hopes that those of you who have not heard it will take a half hour to do so. And you couldn’t have a better performance to enjoy than Joshua Bell with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as shared on YouTube here:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61

Premiered 12/23/1806, Vienna

If it were not for the presence of the solo violinist at the front of the stage from the first graceful drumbeats of the opening, it would not be obvious for some time that a violin concerto was indeed being performed. Beethoven did not lack an affinity for the instrument, to be sure. In fact, he had spent much of the earlier part of 1806, the year the concerto was written, composing the three “Rasumovsky” string quartets.

The violin was, therefore, well in his head, fingers and pen. Beethoven wrote two other works for violin and orchestra in earlier years: two romances and a fragment of a concerto for violin in C Major. As for his orchestral writing, Beethoven had already composed four symphonies, including his great “Eroica.”

The first movement of the violin concerto, Allegro ma non troppo, follows the structure of an orchestral opening movement and at substantial length. Ever the innovator, Beethoven—in the same way that an author searches for that perfect opening line to his next novel—was always looking for a novel introduction to his works. Here, he reaches to the very back of the orchestra and asks the oft-neglected timpani to lead off with four solo knocks, as if calling the muses to order.

This four-note motif becomes a recurring musical kernel, appearing in various guises throughout the movement. Notably, it functions as a thematic bridge between the first two themes. The first violins perform a series of narrow, little sixteenth-note turns at the end of the first theme before settling on four gentle A’s, which segue directly into the secondary theme—a gliding, winning woodwind theme like the sun appearing from above the clouds.

The Larghetto is beautifully calm and shows the composer delighting so in his theme that he repeats it four times in a row, while asking the solo violin to craft the most delicate sounds in its upper register.

The Rondo begins immediately, and as if to make up for its eighty-eight measures of rest at the beginning of the first movement, the solo violin jumps right in with only the merest suggestion of accompaniment from the basses and lays out and lays into the melody. The volume is piano, but Beethoven instructs the soloist to play on the violin’s lowest string, ensuring a dark, rich, resonant sound. This is immediately contrasted with a repeat of the melody, this time in the instrument’s highest range and to the accompaniment of the violin section.

Though a cornerstone of the modern repertoire, it fell out of favor not long after its premiere. The composer Felix Mendelssohn, a celebrated conductor of his day and champion of neglected works, notably those of Bach, brought back Beethoven’s violin concerto with the help of a prodigiously talented 13-year-old violinist named Joseph Joachim, who was to become one of, if not the most, influential violinists of his day.

Popularity: 6% [?]