Joseph Joachim: Violin Concerto No. 1 , 2, 3번

Joseph Joachim 

(28 June 1831 – 15 August 1907) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher.

A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant

violinists of the 19th century.

 

Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 3 'in einem Satz'

Allegro - Presto assai

Sunyoen Kim, violin
Staatskapelle Weimar
Michael Halász, conductor

 

The Violin Concerto in G minor dates from 1851, when Joachim had a brief flirtation with the musically 'Progressive" school of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner, headquartered in Weimar. It is dedicated to Liszt, for whom Joachim led the Weimar court orchestra from 1850 to 1852. It is a true one-movement concerto, following an expansive sonata-form layout, with several cadenzas for the soloist, and a brief coda, where the tempo increases from Allegro to Presto assai.

 

Violin Concerto No 2 in D minor, op 11

 

Violin Concerto No. 2 in D Minor "in the Hungarian Manner", Op.11 is a Romantic violin concerto written by violinist Joseph Joachim (1831–1907). Rarely performed, it has been described as "the Holy Grail of Romantic violin concertos." by music critic David Hurwitz.^[1]

 

Structure

The work is in three movements that are marked:

1. Allegro un poco maestoso
2. Romanze; Andante
3. Finale alla Zingara: Allegro con spirito

The "Hungarian Manner" is in keeping with the Joachim's Hungarian heritage. However, like most people of the time, he did not distinguish between Hungarian folk music and gypsy music.

This is a very long work (with a playing time over 45 minutes) and thus is a very difficult piece for the soloist. Practicing it has been likened by the violinist Rachel Barton Pine to "training to run a marathon".^[2]

Performance history

Alan Walker claims that Joachim performed the concerto, with Franz Liszt conducting, on 3 October 1853 in Karlsruhe on the opening day of the Karlsruhe Music Festival. This is incorrect: the concerto performed on that occasion was Joachim's Op. 3, Violin Concerto in one Movement in G minor (1851), dedicated to Franz Liszt.

The "Hungarian" Violin Concerto, op. 11 was written in the summer of 1857, given its premiere on 24 March 1860 in Hanover, and published by Breitkopf and Härtel in 1861. (See Beatrix Borchard, Stimme und Geige, Böhau, 2005, ISBN 3-205-77242-3, accompanying CD) ^[3]

 

Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major

 

I. Allegro non troppo 0:00
II. Andante 16:36
III. Allegro giocoso ed energico, ma non troppo vivace 25:18

Takako Nishizaki, violin
Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra
Meir Minsky, conductor

 

Joachim was born in Kittsee, near Bratislava and Eisenstadt, in what is today's Burgenland area of Austria. In 1833 his family moved to Pest, where he studied violin with Stanisław Serwaczyński, the concertmaster of the opera in Pest. In 1839, Joachim continued his studies at the Vienna Conservatory. He was taken by his cousin, Fanny Wittgenstein to live and study in Leipzig, where he became a protégé of Felix Mendelssohn.

On 27 May 1844 Joachim, at age not quite 13, in his London Philharmonic debut with Mendelssohn conducting, played the solo part in Beethoven's violin concerto. This was a triumph in several respects. Despite Beethoven's recognition as one of the greatest composers, and the ranking nowadays of his violin concerto as among the greatest few, it was far from being so ranked before Joachim's performance. But Joachim was very well prepared to play Beethoven's concerto, having written his own cadenzas for it and memorized the piece. Joachim's performance helped establish the Beethoven concerto as a pinnacle of the literature and made him popular in England for the rest of his long career.

Following Mendelssohn's death in 1847, Joachim stayed briefly in Leipzig, teaching at the Conservatorium and playing on the first desk of the Gewandhaus Orchestra with Ferdinand David. In 1848, Franz Liszt took up residence in Weimar, determined to re-establish the town's reputation as the Athens of Germany. There, he gathered a circle of young avant-garde disciples, vocally opposed to the conservatism of the Leipzig circle. Joachim was amongst the first of these. He served Liszt as concertmaster, and for several years enthusiastically embraced the new "psychological music," as he called it. In 1852 he moved to Hanover, at the same time dissociating himself from the musical ideals of the 'New German School' (Liszt, Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, and their followers, as defined by journalist Franz Brendel). In 1853, Joachim met the then publicly unknown 20-year-old Brahms, was highly impressed by him, and gave him a letter of recommendation to Robert Schumann. Brahms was received by Schumann and his wife Clara with great enthusiasm. After Robert's mental breakdown in 1854 and death in 1856, Joachim, Clara, and Brahms remained lifelong friends and shared musical views.

Joachim's time in Hanover was his most prolific period of composition. Then and during the rest of his career, he frequently performed with Clara Schumann.

On 10 May 1863 Joachim married the contralto Amalie Schneeweiss (stage name: Amalie Weiss) (1839–99). In 1866, Joachim moved to Berlin, where he was invited to help found a new department of the Royal Academy of Music. There he became the director of the Hochschule für ausübende Tonkunst, or High School for Musical Performance.

In 1884, Joachim and his wife separated after he became convinced that she was having an affair with the publisher Fritz Simrock. Brahms, certain that Joachim's suspicions were groundless, wrote a sympathetic letter to Amalie, which she later produced as evidence in Joachim's divorce proceeding against her. This led to a cooling of Brahms and Joachim's friendship, which was not restored until some years later, when Brahms composed the Double Concerto in A minor for violin and cello, Op. 102, as a peace offering to his old friend. It was co-dedicated to the first performers, Joachim and cellist Robert Hausmann.

In late 1895 both Brahms and Joachim were present at the opening of the new Tonhalle at Zurich, Switzerland; Brahms conducted and Joachim was assistant conductor. But in April, two years later, Joachim was to lose forever this revered friend, as Johannes Brahms died at the age of 64 at Vienna. At Meiningen, in December 1899, it was Joachim who made the speech when a statue to Brahms was unveiled.