Beethoven Violin Concerto: The Beethoven Letters

Dear Andrew,

When Jonathan Del Mar invited me to collaborate on the violin part of a new edition of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, we decided to wipe the slate clean and present an edition that embraces an ethos of performance closer to one that Beethoven might have recognised. The immediate benefit of this is that the violin part of the new Bärenreiter edition stays as close as possible to Beethoven’s text.

All slurs, added by a previous generation of players, have been removed. This is a gain – and of course also a loss. It helps us to understand Beethoven’s musical intentions more clearly, but in the process also eliminates a great tradition of violin playing most of us have grown up with. So the question here is: is it possible (and do we dare) to free our thinking from traditional solutions, sanctified by generations of great violinists, in order to look afresh at this concerto?

Yours, Detlef

 

Dear Detlef,

Thank you for your letter and the new edition of op.61. It provides a long-awaited alternative to those inherited solutions that have been, in your tactful phrase, ‘sanctified by generations of great violinists’. We must remember that, compared to many other works of Beethoven, op.61 did not find a secure foothold in the repertoire until Joachim’s lifetime, half a century after the 1806 premiere. Such a ‘tradition’ is of little relevance to an Urtext edition and performers should be able to make their own decisions without resorting to imitation (a synonym for tradition). To those who hide behind tradition, exalting it as the wisdom of hindsight, I would quote Charles Rosen’s pointed definition (in The Frontiers of Meaning): ‘Tradition – the name generally given to widely accepted error.’

Yours, Andrew

 

Dear Andrew,

My very personal experience in preparing the violin part is that the logic of a musical text is different from the logic of body and instrument. What appears in its ideal musical form in the score needs to be translated into sounds that project the voice of the solo violin clearly to an audience, while blending perfectly with the orchestra. This is a challenge if one plays the slurs and bowings in their original form. Nevertheless, every challenge can certainly be met.

Yours, Detlef

 

Dear Detlef,

Your edition succeeds in combining the objectivity of an editor with your ‘very personal experience’ as a performer. I applaud and admire your certainty that, although ‘the logic of a musical text is different to the logic of body and instrument’, ‘every challenge can be met’. Much has changed since Beethoven’s day to affect radically the way a soloist must play: the size and density of sound of orchestras, instruments, auditoria, audience expectations and so on.

I do not believe that we are more or less musical than Beethoven’s contemporaries, if that could be measured, but we are encumbered by history and incorrect thinking – for example, that op.61 is one of the big violin concertos, alongside those of Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Sibelius; that beauty of sound and size of tone are paramount; that how we play op.61 defines who we are. If only there were several violin concertos by Beethoven, just as there are for piano! We would then be far more relaxed about approaching this one.

Yours, Andrew

 

Dear Andrew,

The first obvious specific matter that needs to be addressed is the question of tempo. Contrary to common belief, Beethoven was flexible with his tempos in performance. He would slow down or speed up as the music required. This kind of flexibility will affect not only the performance but also the choice of fingerings. Also, considering some of the long slurs in the first and second movements, it seems that the basic tempo should not be too slow.

This brings us to principles of bowing. There is the old Baroque–Classical ‘rule of down bow’ versus a more modern, post-Viotti approach to be considered. Also, are Beethoven’s slurs actual bowings or merely phrasing suggestions? I personally think they can be both, depending on the musical situation. Looking at the manuscript and early sources, many slurs were considerably longer and Beethoven subsequently shortened them. For example, in bars 92–95 in the first movement, Beethoven originally wrote a single slur over four bars, but later shortened it to one slur per bar. In these cases they are definitely phrasing suggestions already tailored to the fact that we do not have an unending bow.

Therefore, it seems that Beethoven gave his blessing to splitting long phrases into several down and up bows. Should we then split even more, just to give our tone more power, or should we absolutely stick to Beethoven’s solutions?

Yours, Detlef

 

Dear Detlef,

As you say, there is plenty of evidence that Beethoven was at times flexible with tempo. Although duration statistics should be used with caution, a quick survey of recordings shows that performances are on average slower than they were 80 years ago, and also that soloists performing the Piano Concerto version (op.61a) take faster tempos than most recent violinists.

For example, to get from the opening timpani stroke to the first movement cadenza takes Wolfsthal (1928), Heifetz and Huberman about 17 minutes. Busch and Szigeti take 18 minutes, as do most pianists. In contrast, few violinists nowadays get there in less than 20 minutes (Vengerov in nearly 23!). The same trend is observable in the other movements as well. The first victims of this decline in tempo are usually the phrasing, which becomes over-burdened and static (think of the very opening), and Beethoven’s slurs.

An old justification for ignoring his slurs (and those of Brahms) is that they are marks of phrasing rather than bowing. What a tiresome excuse for lazy thinking! Beethoven knows well enough that a long slur requires a slow bow stroke. (So does Brahms.) Indeed, every slur carries information. Take the divine second-movement melody (from bar 45): if you can make the first bars sound as Beethoven asks while splitting his slurs, you may ask, ‘Why not?’ My answer is, ‘Why bother?’ Now look at the opening movement’s first solo melody (from bar 102): why change what Beethoven wrote?

If you find the slurs difficult, try changing something else – phrasing, sound, dynamic, orchestral balance, tempo, your expectations, even your technique – before rewriting one of the greatest composers in history. We must all be on the lookout for the hubristic tendency to place our own puny selves above the composer or to allow the music to fall victim to our weaknesses of mind or technique. The rule of down bow, that rhythmically and/or harmonically strong notes are always played down, may have been labelled ‘wretched’ by Geminiani but it was far from arbitrary.

The down-bow stroke naturally begins more strongly than the up, thanks to gravity and the weight of the player’s limb. I see clear evidence that composers expected players to follow the old rule well into the 19th century, because it is the embodiment of common-sense phrasing. No violinist would ever start the first or last movements of op.61 on a down bow (… so why oh why does anyone start Mozart’s G major Concerto on an up bow?!).

Yours, Andrew

 

Dear Andrew,

Concerning fingerings, I use a more modern approach based on today’s scale and arpeggio technique but integrate some ‘voicing’ by setting off the qualities of the individual strings against one another. Where it seems musically sound I have also used the more modern one-melody, one-string system.

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is a hybrid, reaching both back and forwards, to Classical and a more modern style of playing. So, in this light, I think it correct to mix these two ways of playing. Now comes a sore point: vibrato. How much and when should we use it? Again, another aspect that is easily overlooked: portamentos. Should we really use slides? I have included fingerings to allow their use in the development of the first movement, but what would Beethoven’s ideas have been in this respect?

Yours, Detlef

 

Dear Detlef,

Your careful choice of fingerings, some monodic, others polyphonic, reflects well op.61’s position as something of a watershed. The chin rest (or chin bar) is not first sighted until years after the concerto was written – although I always felt that op.61 alone was reason enough to invent one! To compensate for the lack of a firm chin grip, fingering choices necessarily involved a greater degree of flexibility than our modern, scale-centric, position-based training allows. Extensions, contractions, finger substitutions, ‘crawling’ motions and a judicious use of portamento were fundamental ingredients of a solo violinist’s left-hand technique in Beethoven’s day.

One inevitable result is a less pronounced, narrower vibrato than we are used to hearing today. But I should put that the other way around: vibrato had not yet evolved from an embellishment of phrasing into a component of sound. That took place fairly recently.

According to one eyewitness to Joachim’s playing in the early 1900s, ‘No one who listened appreciatively to his playing will ever forget the stillness and grand simplicity of the way he so often played slow themes of Beethoven, allowing himself not one slide when avoidable or one hint of vibrato.’ Perhaps we string players should seek the advice of fine clarinettists or horn players who perform without any vibrato but sacrifice nothing of phrasing and expression.

Yours,  Andrew

 

Dear Andrew,

Regarding cadenzas, there is a large collection available from Bärenreiter, spanning from Auer via Nováček to Ysaÿe. Cadenzas were, of course, an opportunity for soloists to improvise and display their dazzling virtuosity. I would love to hear your opinions here. Should we dare to do this again? To finish this exchange of letters with a more general question: what exactly is Beethoven’s Violin Concerto? Is it a late Classical piece, conceived in the tradition which produced the concertos of Haydn and Mozart, or is it in fact an early Romantic concerto?

Yours, Detlef

 

Dear Detlef,

When thinking about cadenzas, Prince Charles’s words (on modern architecture) come to mind: ‘like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend’. Early 19th-century cadenzas were ephemeral and personal, composed in the style of the day, rather than of the concerto itself (look at Beethoven’s un-Mozartian cadenzas to K466). The later Romantic approach – ingenious, virtuosic time-outs from the business of the concerto, or some kind of pseudo-development section – will hardly suffi ce for op.61.

Beethoven has himself confused the issue by leaving us an eccentric cadenza to the Piano Concerto version that is untypical in its length and rhapsodic structure. (It also resists being transferred to a violin, despite some valiant efforts over the years.) Thanks to Bärenreiter, we now have a selection of intriguing cadenzas to study.

I would still advise players, however, to get fiddling and produce their own. What better way is there to get intimately involved with this masterpiece, or to develop the healthiest of respect for its composer, than to join in with the process of creation? It removes any question about whether op.61 is late Classical or early Romantic and brings it right up to the present. It is clearly post-Classical, if by Classical we refer to the concertos of Haydn and Mozart.

To find a context for op.61 we should look rather at the concertos by Viotti, Clement, Kreutzer, Rode and others. Beethoven’s concerto is Janus-faced, looking both ways: Classical in its architecture and language and yet innovative in its proportions and breadth of vision. It is not yet Romantic, albeit romantic, but opens up a path for later composers to explore.

Legend has it that Clement premiered the concerto only hours after it was completed. Thanks to you and Jonathan Del Mar, we can take a large step closer to the ideal of playing the concerto as though the ink is still thrillingly wet. To answer one of your earlier questions: ‘Is it possible (and do we dare) to free our thinking from traditional solutions?’ Yes, as you have so admirably shown.

Yours, Andrew

Read: Long read: Playing Baroque and Classical

Read: ‘Joyfully, with a lot of spirit’ - Julia Fischer on Beethoven’s Violin Concerto