Schumann's violin concerto

 

A clip from the third movement polonaise (which is in D major), showing the five note leitmotiv which occurs in all three movements. I mean it's the general shape that recurs, not the exact intervals. (It also occurs in the Op 131 Fantasy in C for Violin and Orchestra.) In the first movement it's the basis of the second subject, so we hear a lot of it. In the second movement it's less central but nonetheless occurs in several passages. Here in the third movement it's the main rondo theme (but now preceded by a couple of other ascending semiquavers, not shown in the image above).

Both those works were written in 1853. Schumann's mental breakdown came not long afterwards. In my opinion there's no sign of it in the utterly lovely violin concerto, but maybe Clara and Joachim thought differently; at any rate it was effectively suppressed and its first performance wasn't until 83 years later.

There's maybe something melancholy about compositions that were basically lost until long after the time they would affect the main course of musical history. I feel it listening to Berwald's powerfully unusual symphonies, and again with Schumann's powerfully unusual violin concerto. They take us off to new places, but no-one else knew, so what does it matter?

Not that I feel the same about Haydn's trumpet concerto, now one of the most familiar and beloved cornerstones of trumpet repertoire. If 19th century listeners didn't hear it (basically because the keyed trumpet never took off), that was just their loss. 

It takes a while to feel certain the violin concerto doesn't have something wrong with it. That first movement, simply alternating its two themes (ABABABABA) -- is that a permissible way to build a first movement? Of course they are not just repetitions, there's magical transformation, but it isn't of the usual sonata kind. The word development doesn't seem right when some of the most striking ideas are more about stripping down the music than elaborating it. 

We worry. Schumann's orchestral music has a long history of being viewed patronizingly. Was the madness affecting him? And then the absence of virtuoso writing or high register passages, and what about the tempi? 

But I have an idea that Schumann's violin concerto did have one pretty significant influence: on Brahms' second piano concerto. (Another very unusual concerto.) There's the general subsuming of solo instrument to an equal partnership in the music, and the cello duet with the solo instrument in the slow movement, but where I really see the influence is in those elegantly relaxed finales. There's even a moment (the music pauses and rustling strings signal a key change), when it feels like Brahms is quoting. (Maybe the savage orchestral opening of Brahms' first piano concerto ... begun in 1854 ... could also respond to the opening of the Schumann violin concerto -- which sometimes I find even more terrifying --, but I've probably gone off the rails here.)

A recital

I waited for my stepdaughter Kyli, along the street in Ole and Steen's (after eating prawns on rye bread) -- it was Monday 11 October 2021. Quick hellos, dump my safety-pinned backpack in the cloakroom, and now here we are in the second row of the Wigmore Hall at 19:30, to hear Alexander Ullman's recital. 

I can't do classical music reviews, I'm perhaps too dazzled by just being here, and would only report that he and the piano and the occasion and the music were all indistinguishably brilliant. 

I've been living in memories of those brilliant two hours for the past fortnight, and here's a re-creation of the music, for my own convenience and indulgence. No comparison or contrast of these YouTube performances with Ullman's is implied: they're simply the first reasonable ones I could find. 

The opening piece: one of Joseph Haydn's sixty-two keyboard sonatas, in G (Hoboken XVI/40 -- Landon 54.) It was one of three short sonatas composed in 1784 and dedicated to the 16-year-old Princess Marie Hermenegild Esterházy. There are just two movements: a sort of variation movement with a reiterated simple melody leading off into increasingly fanciful flights; then a briefer presto. 

Haydn wrote his sonatas for either harpsichord or fortepiano; it was a period of transition. In deference to the former instrument, there are no dynamic markings. But they do seem to invite a touch of musicianly ornamentation, and of course the dynamic range of a modern Steinway needn't be entirely neglected. It's accommodating music, asking for wit and sparkle. 

Haydn's works suffer in the public eye from what a writer about The Fall once called "the curse of quality". In other words, he composed so much top-quality music that there is no accepted shortlist of standouts, and hence no iconic pieces being endlessly replayed on Classic FM. Haydn is hardly unknown or unacclaimed, yet in a way he's also a secret passion, one that I'm rapidly acquiring. But there was never a less snobbish composer. 

Consequently, too, there is not a vast range of YouTube performances of Haydn's Sonata XVI/40 to choose from. This is the Latvian pianist Vestards Šimkus, very theatrical and very exciting too. 

The other piece before the interval was Beethoven's piano sonata no. 21 in C ("Waldstein"), Op. 53, composed in 1803-04. I don't really need to introduce that, do I? Beethoven had acquired a new piano, the latest sort, and this score was the first time he marked foot pedals rather than knee levers. From its very first bar the "Waldstein" had a sound that must have seemed radically new. His deafness was advancing quickly, but he could still hear it when he composed it, just about. 

Here's an explosive performance by the Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau from 1977, when he was 74.

Most of the interval we were queuing for the bar. As the five-minute bell sounded we were buying and downing drinks and anything else we could see. The bag of chocolate-covered honeycomb pieces was probably a mistake. You can't crunch them while someone is performing the most delicate of "Nuages Gris", and as they melt down the back of your throat they induce a desperate urge to cough. We did pretty well to stifle our coughing urges, but it was a distraction for us, if no-one else.  

Anyway, here is Liszt's late piece "Nuages gris" (S199, from 1881) as the background music for a short film (it makes great film music). The pianist is Krystian Zimerman.

After a long pause (no applause invited) we went straight into Liszt's comparatively enormous B minor Sonata (S178, composed 1849-1853). 

There's a wonderful choice of performances of this famous piece on Youtube. I'm going for this one by the Swiss pianist Beatrice Berrut. (Appropriately for a Liszt performer she was born, as her biog tells us, in the "Vallée d’Obermann".)

I've heard this sonata so many times but, I don't know why, the ending always feels new, a story I don't know and can't anticipate. I feel the almost oppressive deep-sea intensity of my own listening. 

A very long pause, and then a long standing ovation; I don't think I ever remember being part of such a heartfelt one. Some of that was our personal sense of miracle at finally being in a concert audience with other real people listening to real music. But Alexander Ullman would surely have got an ovation anyway: I loved his easy communication, his musicality, the range of emotion and styles and piano colours.

The encores:

1. Arvo Pärt, "Für Alina" (1976). For people who care about music history, this was arguably the third paradigm-shifting piece we had heard tonight. Whatever, the effect of this dramatically different soundworld after the Liszt sonata was magical. 

Here it is performed by Hyunju Angela Yu:

2. Chopin, Waltz in D flat (Op. 64, No. 1) ("Minute Waltz")

A bonbon that never loses its deliciousness. This performance is by the Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa:

3. And finally, in memory of Alexander Ullman's teacher Leon Fleisher (1928-2020), a spellbound and spellbinding rendering of Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze" (arr. Egon Petri). 

Here it is being performed by the master himself. (This was after he had recovered the use of his right hand, after some forty years of only being able to perform repertoire for the left hand.)

*

I wanted to include lots of Alexander Ullman himself, but you can find all hisYouTube performances without my help. 

Anyway, here he is, back in 2017, playing four pieces by Liszt. (The second one is "Nuages gris".) This was at the 11th Liszt Competition (Utrecht), where he won first prize. 

And then I remember us drinking tea (me, anyway -- Kyli probably had a bottle of water) at a Pret somewhere near Bond Street underground, and then hurtling eastwards on the Central Line, trying to shout conversation through the uproar of the train. Buying a pomelo in Leyton High Street, and being introduced to Kyli's garden spiders, George and Albert (I think... they were old East End sort of names anyway). 

Another account of Alexander Ullman's Wigmore Hall concert:

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.wordpress.com/2021/10/11/alexander-ullman-the-supreme-stylist-at-the-wigmore-hall/comment-page-1/