That concert begins at 6:00 pm, earlier than the traditional starting time, so let me stress that 6pm is not a typo.
Why? Well, every now and them someone wonders if it wouldn’t be a good idea to have something available earlier in the evening so people leaving work at 5:00 would have a concert they could go to after work but before they go home and get settled in for the evening, putting off the homeward-bound rush-hour traffic. We’ve tried it a couple of times for the SummerMusic series and it seemed to work.
But this is the first time with one of the subscription series and, in this case, the reason’s a little different.
Concert dates are determined by what artists the presenter wants to present, trying to find a date in the mutual calendars of the presenter’s series and the artist’s schedule. This can often be a tight fit, depending on availability (and this is why winter concerts are such a bear because we can’t just postpone it till next week because of snow because, quite possibly, the artist will be playing in California or England that night and so isn’t available).
This may be the first time Jonathan Biss appears in Harrisburg but it is not the first time Miriam Fried has been here: I last saw her in January of 1984 – speaking of snow dates. She played the Beethoven Violin Concerto on a very snowy night and it was one of those occasions where – aside from being unable to postpone the Tuesday night concert – two players in the orchestra were unable to make it. Unfortunately they were the bassoon section which meant the William Schuman Symphony No. 3 sounded a bit funky, especially in the long bassoon solo in the last movement’s fugue where we heard 8 measures of silence before the bass clarinet came in.
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For their Market Square Concerts program (did I mention it begins at 6:00?), they will be performing a program of four violin sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven:
Sonata No. 4 in A Minor, Op.23
Sonata No. 10 in G, Op. 96
Sonata No. 2 in A, Op. 12, No. 2
Sonata No. 5 in F, Op. 24 (“Spring”)
Unfortunately for us, Beethoven’s interest in the violin sonata didn’t match his creative output throughout his career like his symphonies, string quartets and piano sonatas. The first nine sonatas were all written in a four-year period early in his career and then one more came along as a “special occasion” during his Middle Period. His most famous (if not his greatest) sonata was for an African-English violinist named George Bridgetower – they gave it its premiere (the composition so hurried that Beethoven had to summon his copyist at 4:30am to have the violin part ready in time) but then later had a falling out (a disagreement over a woman, the story goes), so when it was published a few years later, it was dedicated to the great French violinist, Rodolphe Kreutzer who, it turned out, never played the piece. Beethoven had been hoping for some exposure as a result of this dedication.
That sense of marketing is also behind the dedication of the first set of violin sonatas which appeared in 1799, composed over the two years before that, and dedicated to the highly esteemed composer Antonio Salieri, one of the most powerful musicians in Vienna’s very tight musical world. We think of Salieri today (wrongly) as Mozart’s Murderer (great theater, though it is) but in his day he was a leading court composer and his approval meant good things for young musicians, especially a young 28-year-old from the German provinces. Beethoven studied briefly with Salieri – the art of setting Italian words to music – and these sonatas (although nothing to do with what he learned from the man) could be seen logically as dedicated out of gratitude to his one-time teacher. And, after all, the first set of six string quartets, written around the same time, were dedicated to Franz Josef Haydn, his primary teacher but also a wise move, politically: it was as if, having accepted the dedication, these great artists were putting their stamp of approval on the young composer who was just beginning his career.
Unlike Mozart, who wrote spontaneously, Beethoven’s was a creative struggle, judging from his notebooks. Sketches for the Op. 12 Sonatas appear in some notebooks going back to 1795, meaning he was thinking about if not actually working on them a few years before they were completed and sent to the publisher.
The first and last sonatas on this program form one of Beethoven’s contrasting pairs – for instance, the dramatic 5th Symphony followed by the bucolic 6th, justifiably nicknamed the “Pastoral” which he worked on at the same time and which were premiered together (their numbers, reversed). These sonatas were intended to be Op.23, Nos. 1 & 2, but due to an engravers error were each given separate numbers.
The A Minor is the dramatic one, turbulent and dark at times with more lyrical contrasts that usually end up subsumed by the drama.
The F Major is the “bucolic,” more relaxed one, if not exactly Pastoral in mood. Its sense of lightness and benign qualities have earned it the nickname “Spring,” a reminder that Beethoven enjoyed his summer trips to the countryside in order to compose in peace.
The last sonata to be composed came 10 years after its predecessor, the “Kreutzer.” It is usually overlooked because it does not seem to be an advance on the magnitude of the concerto-like 9th Sonata but there may be a practical reason for this. For whatever reason Beethoven did not continue writing violin sonatas as he did piano sonatas, the 10th was written for another French violinist, Pierre Rode, who was visiting Vienna in 1812 – a fateful year for Beethoven as well as Napoleon – and who, apparently, requested a sonata from the now well-established Beethoven.
It was written at the end of the year Beethoven completed the 7th and wrote the 8th Symphonies, during which time he (we assume) wrote his letter to the Immortal Beloved (whoever she may have been), met her (we assume) at a spa in Bohemia that summer and (we assume) broke up with her before he returned to Vienna (stopping off, by the way, to annoy his brother who was living with his girl-friend without having married her: you can read more about how Beethoven’s personal life intertwined with his creative life that year in this post at my blog, Thoughts on a Train).The bust (see right) was made by Klein in 1812, the likeness taken from a "life mask."He returned to Vienna in November, then wrote the G Major Sonata for a concert in late December with Rode, aware that Rode, though four years his junior, was somewhat past his prime (as the story goes). The composer Ludwig Spohr, a great violinist in his own right, indicated when he was in Vienna in 1812 that Rode was already past his prime, finding later that Rode’s technique had deteriorated substantially that the man put aside playing the violin to focus on teaching and composing.
This may explain the lack of bravura in Beethoven’s last violin sonata. He wrote to his patron and student, the Archduke Rudolph, that “I did not make great haste in the last movement [of the G Major Violin Sonata] for the sake of mere punctuality, the more because, in writing it, I had to consider the playing of Rode. In our finales we like rushing and resounding passages, but this does not please R and — this hinders me somewhat.”
However, Spohr, who was in Vienna at the same time – essentially competing with Rode for audience – did leave an account of his acquaintance with Beethoven that would also lead us to believe that, because of his deafness, the composer was past his prime as a performer: Spohr heard a private performance of Beethoven playing the “Ghost” Trio that was “by no means an enjoyment.”
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“…in the first place, the pianoforte was woefully out of tune which, however, troubled Beethoven little, since he could hear nothing of it, and, secondly, of the former so admired excellence of the virtuoso, scarcely anything was left, in consequence of his total deafness. In the forte, the poor deaf man hammered in such a way upon the keys that entire groups of notes were inaudible, so that one lost all intelligence of the subject unless the eye followed the score at the same time. I felt moved with deepest sorrow at so hard a destiny… Beethoven’s almost continual melancholy was no longer a riddle to me now.” – Ludwig Spohr (Autobiography)
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Conversing with Beethoven, when they met at a restaurant, was unpleasant as Spohr had to speak “so loud as to be heard in the third room off.” They met frequently, both at Spohr’s home and at the restaurant. He found Beethoven “a little blunt, not to say uncouth; but a truthful eye beamed from under his bushy eyebrows.”
After Beethoven had been absent from the restaurant for several days, Spohr inquired if he had been ill? Beethoven replied, “My boot was and as I have only one pair, I had house-arrest.”
Such was Beethoven’s life at the time he composed this pleasant, genial violin sonata written for Rode – Spohr’s “rival” – but which, like the Piano Trio in B-flat Major written the year before, was dedicated instead to the Archduke Rudolph who, we should remember, was the only patron Beethoven had who always supplied him with funding even in difficult economic times like 1812.
- Dick Strawser
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