LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Concerto for violin and orchestra in D major op. 61
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Symphony n. 4 in E minor op. 98
Violin
Viktoria Mullova
Conductor
Riccardo Minasi
Orchestra of the Opera Carlo Felice Genova
The composition of Beethoven’s only violin concerto, apart from the two Romanze, takes place in the autumn of 1806, at a particularly quiet moment in Beethoven’s private life. It was probably written at the request of Franz Clement the violinist who then performed it for the first time, in Vienna, on 23 December 1806, at the Theater an der Wien. The first performance was not a great success as the soloist decided to perform the first two movements of the concerto, so before the third movement he interspersed the performance with a series of virtuosic pieces that broke the unity of the composition. It was then the historic performances of Vieuxtemps and Joachim, the latter conducted by Mendelssohn, that immediately put this page back in its rightful position. The débâcle of the first performance was obviously a misunderstanding, as it is clear that this concerto remains one of the great works for violin and orchestra in the entire literature of the genre, a work in which the cantabile and lyricism of the violin are sumptuously celebrated. Beethoven also treats the relationship between the solo instrument and the orchestra in a special way. While in the piano concertos the listener had been accustomed by Beethoven to witnessing a kind of heated confrontation between the solo instrument and the orchestra, with this concerto this diatribe is toned down and the violin, despite its solo autonomy, becomes a persuasive accomplice of the orchestra, which in turn shies away from intervening with marked rhythmic and phonic contrasts to the lyricism of the solo instrument. From a formal point of view, the concerto takes the form of a large diptych in which the first part consists of the first movement (Allegro ma non troppo) in sonata form, the second element of the diptych is formed by the slow movement (Larghetto) seamlessly joined to the final Rondo (Allegro).
Johannes Brahms, wrote his Fourth Symphony between 1884 and 1885, immediately after finishing his Third Symphony in 1883. The first performance took place on 25 October 1885 at the Hoftheater in Meiningen where the prestigious court orchestra of the same name was based and conducted by Brahms himself for the occasion. Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, written when he was about 50 years old, is also his last symphony. It not only closes the cycle of the great Hamburg composer’s symphonic production, but also represents in some ways the last example of the Classical-Romantic symphonism that was shortly to evolve with other sensibilities. Brahms saluted the genre of the symphony by devoting spasmodic meticulousness and research to this work. He felt the full weight of the confrontation with what in the Germanic musical world was considered the most illustrious form, the one to which Beethoven had given his imprimatur in the most categorical form, the form in which the sonata form was reconciled with the mastery of orchestral writing. This is why the Fourth Symphony is extremely dense in terms of musical content, extreme rigour, and emotional contrasts; it is the place where the rigour of the contrapuntal exercise of Bach’s ascendancy coexists with the cantabile nature of Romantic inspiration, the exuberant gypsy character of the syncopated rhythms of the third movement with the poetic intensity of the second movement. A brief mention goes to the last of the four movements, which Brahms chose to set using a Passacaglia. It is an ancient contrapuntal form that greatly constrains the composer in movements and choices. Despite this, the composer succeeds in giving the movement a dynamism and a series of musical ideas of extraordinary strength that coexist with the rigour of counterpoint thanks to the display of an absolutely mastered compositional technique.
Francesco Ottonello
