I thought we would take a break from our series on the Brandenburg concerti and enjoy a lighthearted encore by the Finish violinist Pekka Kuusisto. The performance itself needs very little explanation, so I thought I would provide you with a bit of background on the artist himself. As you’ll see, this performance showcases an unbelievable combination of instrumental and vocal talent.
Mr. Kuusisto is a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to musical performance. One night he will play a concerto that has only existed for a few days, and the next night he can perform 16th-century compositions just as well. While this ability may be hard to appreciate without doing it, suffice it to say that this is somewhat similar to having the ability to dance a ballet one day and play in the NFL the next. As the video showcases, he is also a gifted improviser and singer. One fact about Kuusisto that I thought was particularly interesting in light of our recent study of the Brandenburg concerti is his fascination with the music of J.S. Bach. This is reflected in many ways, most notably in his composition of a series of rock and roll concerti based on several Bach sonatas.
The first two Brandenburg concerti have shown us that Bach is not afraid to embrace new styles (such as the Italian concerto grosso format) and is a master creating texture (remember the strange assortment of solo instruments in the second concerto?). As we will see, he will continue this exploration of new styles and sounds throughout the rest of the concerti.
Brandenburg #3 is no exception. Bach returns again to the concerto grosso format, but this time he does so without featuring a soloist. Is every instrument a soloist? Are none of them soloists? We’re not really sure, but we do know that the structure of the piece is unmistakably similar to concerti written by Antonio Vivaldi only a few years earlier. In Bach’s Germany, where the concerto format was seen as a remote and distasteful musical style, his embrace of it would have been very controversial.
Bach must have really loved controversy, because he didn’t just stop with his use of the concerto format. He also added a cadenza, another musical convention that was almost unheard of at this time. A cadenza is an opportunity for the solo instrumentalist to impress the crowd by improvising on top of the composition’s main themes. In this concerto, the cadenza replaces the middle movement and is played by the lead violinist.
Welcome back to our series on the Brandenburg concertos. This week will be hearing the second concerto, which features the trumpet, recorder, oboe, and violin as solo voices. This strange conglomeration of solo instruments becomes a delightful ensemble in Bach’s masterful hands. He expertly balances their different sonorities by including the most detailed dynamic markings in the entire set of six concerti. He also includes conversational elements with the entire orchestra to ensure that no one instrument overpowers the others (although in the final Allegro movement, it seems that he can’t help but let the trumpet loose at full strength for at least a few bars 🙂 .
You will notice right away that this concerto is much more virtuosic than the first concerto. Bach wastes no time in making sure we experience the power and range of the trumpet, whose part regularly soars above the accompanying orchestra during the first movement. The trumpet backs off, however, in the second movement, which features that same melancholy sighing theme that we heard in the first concerto. We also hear a fragment of the first concerto in the final movement of this concerto, which is structured as a fugue.
I found it interesting that Bach was writing the six Brandenburg Concertos at the same time he was writing his famous six solo sonatas for violin. He also wrote six miniatures for solo piano (much lesser known) and six sonatas for solo cello. This numerical pattern is typical of Bach, who was fascinated with numerology and was constantly experimenting with representations of numbers in his music.
Welcome to a new series! Over the next six weeks, we will be hearing the six Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach. These are some of the most well-known pieces of classical music ever written.
Despite their popularity, these concertos were not very popular during Bach’s lifetime. Even Bach himself did not think that they were worth very much – he intended them merely as his resume for a new job. Apparently, the Duke that he was working for at the time had recently remarried, and his new wife is not a fan of classical music. Faced with an increasingly shrinking role, Bach decided to seek employment elsewhere. Ironically, he was rejected by the job that he applied for using these six concertos, leading snarky scholars everywhere to title them “the most successful failed job application of all time.”
The first concerto, which we will hear today, is the only one of the six that does not follow the convention of a concerto grosso. This is a format that features two or more solo instruments accompanied by a small orchestral ensemble. It usually includes a fast movement at the beginning and the end and a slow movement in the middle, but this one has four movements. This format was made popular by Antonio Vivaldi, composer of the very famous Four Seasons, and much of the first concerto reflects characteristics of his style. For instance, Bach incorporates a violin piccolo, a tiny instrument played only in Italy and almost never heard in his native Germany. Bach also utilizes wind instruments to create a sound color more often associated with the Italian music of that time than the German music. However, he does not fail to provide his usual sampling of counterpoint genius, as well as the sound of hunting horns throughout the piece. See if you can pick them out! Another thing to listen for it is the sad, almost-weeping voice that occasionally is featured any violin and woodwind parts; this voice is repeated and the subsequent Brandenburg Concertos as well.
One of the most influential people in my life is violin teacher Eva Gruesser. I studied with her from 2007 to 2012, and her instruction made it possible for me to achieve more than I ever imagined. During my time with her, she was the concertmaster of several orchestras around the world. However, she had previously spent 12 years as the first violinist of the world-renowned Lark Quartet. Her time with the Lark included first prizes at multiple international chamber music competitions, as well as regular performances all around the world.
I recently heard that the Lark Quartet will be disbanding at the end of this year. It appears that this decision is simply because a number of factors – job searching, family commitments, etc. – have made it clear that this is the best course of action for the instrumentalists. In honor of their legacy, I thought it would be fitting for us to hear Haydn’s “Lark” Quartet, as played by the Lark Quartet.
The “Lark” was a product of the peak of Haydn’s career in the 1790s. One of his wealthy benefactors had recently passed away and have left him a significant sum of money. He was therefore able to create his own orchestra and develop more time to composing. This quartet was written or for Joseph Tost, the principal second violinist in his new orchestra. Tost was apparently quite a creative and virtuosic musician, and Haydn wanted to replicate some of his energy and the vivacity in this quartet.
The first movement opens with the song of the lark itself. You will hear this song in the first violin part as the other instrumentalists accompany the theme. The second movement is simply an extension of the first, with the first violin carrying the lark’s song. Historians have suggested that’s Haydn disliked writing these slower movements and used a basic template for them in almost every one of his compositions so that he didn’t have to do as much work. The third movement (based on a German folk tune) is the typical Trio movement, and you will hear the cello and viola starting to take over more of the melodic material. The fourth and final movement, in true Haydn form, is a hornpipe that accentuates sharp rhythms and flying runs. (For you music nerds out there, listen for the switch to D minor for the fugal section in the middle, then up to A major – the dominant key – and back home to D major for the ending. All he is doing is running around the circle of fifths via the dominant and sub-dominant).
One of the distinctive features of Haydn quartets is the constant stream of witty surprises that jump out at the listener. For instance, you might expect the first movement, with its exposition of the lark’s song, to revolve around the first violin part. However, the first violin is constantly being held down by the depth and structure of the cello and viola parts, which provide grounding and an occasional retort. Another example is found in the ending of the first movement; rather than finish with a flourish like his contemporaries would have, Haydn lets the accompaniment instruments finish the piece and tags on the first violin’s lark song as an afterthought.
Our music for this week is the Souvenir de Florence by Tchaikovsky.
This string sextet was composed during a time in Tchaikovsky’s life that was devoid of inspiration. Historians have found journal entries from this time in his life that evoke despair and depression. In several of them, Tchaikovsky doubts his ability to compose at all. It is therefore surprising that this cheerful and upbeat composition is the result of such a time in Tchaikovsky’s life.
The composition is structurally very easy to understand. As a rule of thumb, every theme is presented by a single instrument family. In other words, the exposition of a theme will begin in the two violins, progress to the two violas, and end in the two cellos. Although these voices will of course be independent of each other at times, they always resolve in their original pairs.
We are very fortunate to have some of Tchaikovsky’s letters to his colleagues about the piece. We know from these letters that the first movement needs to be played with “great fire and passion.” Similarly, we know that he wanted the slow second movement to reflect a summer thunderstorm with muted lightning in the distance. Tchaikovsky also ventured into relatively uncharted territory by incorporating a fugue format into the third movement. This is a structural and stylistic marker that was much more common 200 years before Tchaikovsky’s time. However, he bravely builds the entire third movement around a fugal system in which the pairs of instruments continuously add and subtract identical thematic material above and beneath each other.
Our music for this week is one of the all-time classics, and its one of the few repeats we’ve had over the past few years. There is so much amazing music out there that it is only worth sending a repeat if it is a truly foundational composition, and this piece qualifies as one such piece. It is the Holberg Suite by Edvard Grieg.
A few thoughts for your listening pleasure:
– Notice that it is written for a strings-only orchestra, giving it an almost Baroque feel at times. This is also reflected in the fact that this Suite is sometimes known by the title of “Suite in the Olden Style.”
– Grieg originally wrote the Holberg Suite for the piano, since he was dedicating it to a playwright friend of his who was a pianist. Later on, however, he is told to have thrown away the piano music in disgust and rearranged the entire work for a string orchestra
– This composition is one of the hallmarks of neoclassicism, which was a musical movement that blended stylistic elements of both the late Romantic/Eduardian era and the early Classical/late Baroque eras.
– It is interesting to note that, aside from his piano concerto and a few of his operas, Grieg is best known for works like the Holberg Suite, which feature an assortment of small dances. This is the exact opposite of most of his contemporaries, who were renowned for their massive four and five-movement symphonies.
– I like to think of this work in the same vein as Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, which we heard last week. It puts aside the Romantic style and harkens back to the Classical era with an almost Mozartian lightness.
– Notice the names of the movements – Praeludium, Gavotte, Air, Rigaudon. All of these names are also the names of the French dance styles that Bach and Handel used in their compositions. This is yet another way that Grieg is paying homage to his predecessors in the Classical era.
Our music for this week is the Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet by Ernest Chausson.
This is a bizarre piece of music. There are six instrumentalists, but it is not called a sextet. There is a solo violin part, but it is not called a concerto. It is named in the fashion of 16th-century dances, but the composer was adamant that it should not be danced to. In other words, we really aren’t sure what this piece is.
Chausson was a lawyer who also studied at the Paris Conservatory. His tragically short lifetime was packed with musical and non-musical endeavors. For instance, he spent years helping to rebuild the city of Paris in the 1850s while also managing a writers group, opening a salon, practicing law, exhibiting his art work at multiple Paris galleries, and composing music. And all this was before he age of 44, when he was killed in a bicycle accident while on vacation in the French countryside.
His compositional style is on full display in this piece. Those of you who are musicians may recognize stylistic elements similar to those of Cesar Franck, with whom Chausson happen to study with at the Paris Conservatory. Chausson, like Franck, is all about creating drama. You will hear the thematic material being traded back and forth between the solo violin and the underlying piano part. At the same time, you will hear the string quartet building on that same theme in its own separate chromatic progression. Throughout the entire piece, Chausson continues to make references to the 16th-century dance forms that he sought to model this piece off of. The second movement, for instance, is a Baroque Sicilienne (a form of royal dance from French courts).
Chausson dedicated this piece to the famous Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye, who gave the peace its first performance in Brussels. After the premiere, Chausson was overheard to say that the composition was an utter failure. Perhaps our taking the time to listen to it today is enough to prove him wrong.
Our music for this week is third movement of the Elgar violin concerto, as performed by the former concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Joseph Silverstein. We have listened to another interpretation of the Elgar concerto before, but it was not nearly as good as this one (it was mine 😉
This performance is worth listening to because of the soloist’s ability to create a unique and memorable sound. This may sound simple, but it is the hardest thing in the world to do. Most violinists out there could play this concerto, but very few of them could make it sound as if they were improvising the notes on the spot. This performance shows an uncanny ability and an incredible giftedness that is hard to find. I want to take a few sentences to highlight some of the ways that this performer stands head and shoulders above most other performers you will hear today.
First of all, the sound is unbelievable. It has an amazing richness and fullness that is so hard to create without adding tension to the body. At the same time, however, the sound is amazingly lyrical and sensitive.
Secondly, the sounds never ends. Silverstein has mastered the art of the bow stroke to such a level that even when he is playing sharper notes or faster passages he is able to connect the sound. This is particularly effective in a romantic era composition like the Elgar concerto, because a connected sound is a more lyrical sound.
Third, Silverstein has a wonderfully smooth and continuous vibrato that sounds as natural as the human voice. Again, this is incredibly hard to do. He uses this vibrato to further create an impression that his sound never ends.
Fourth, he is technically on point. His intonation and execution are impeccable. Well those elements are not necessarily the determining factors for a great performance, his combination of perfect execution and a seemingly endless sound makes his performance all the more impressive.
Fifth and finally, you’ll notice that he is not throwing himself all over the stage like many of today’s musicians do. He has the maturity, composure, and concentration to let the music speak for itself without interposing a gymnastics performance on the audience as a compensation prize. Any musician who moves in that manner is compensating for something that he or she does not have. Silverstein, however, is as close to a complete mastery of the violin as I have ever seen.
Our music for this week is the String Quartet No. 1 in D Major by Tchaikovsky, performed by the Borodin Quartet.
The Borodin Quartet was a product of the very influential Russian School of music. It was originally led by the renowned violinist Mikael Kopelman, who is now a professor at Eastman Conservatory. Although most of the original members are no longer part of the quartet, the group’s legacy is continued through the efforts of a younger generation of Russian musicians.
This quartet is the first of three quartets that Tchaikovsky wrote. It is by far the most popular work of chamber music by Tchaikovsky, due in large part to the unforgettable second movement. Tchaikovsky based the melody of this movement on a folk song that he heard while visiting his sister in the Russian countryside. It is said that Leo Tolstoy, upon first hearing this melody, immediately burst into tears. At its first performance, the quartet was warmly received by the public and became an immediate favorite of that era’s Russian nobility.
In the first movement, listen for the very rich and dense melody that the violins introduce in the first few bars. In the second movement, listen not only for the famous first melody but also the secondary melody that you will hear in the cello and first violin’s conversation later on in the piece. In the third movement, listen for the dance theme that is introduced in the Trio section about halfway through the movement. Finally, in the fourth movement, listen for a re-exploration of two themes from earlier in the quartet. Tchaikovsky places both themes in new and different tonalities, forcing the listener to hear these familiar melodies in a new light.
This Week's Music 