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Technical Notice
| Classical Composer: | Brahms, Johannes |
|---|---|
| Work: | Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77 |
| Year Composed: | 1878 |
| Instrumentation: | vn - 2222/4200/timp.perc/str |
| Publishers: |
Boosey & Hawkes Artaria Edwin F. Kalmus Bärenreiter Verlag Sikorski Breitkopf & Härtel Edition Eulenburg Chester Music and Novello & Co. The Edwin A. Fleisher Music Collection |
| Duration: | 00:40:00 |
| Period: | Romantic |
| Work Category: | Concerto |
Work Information
Available Recording(s)
Brahms worked on the Violin Concerto during his summer holiday at Pörtschach, where in 1877 he had started his Second Symphony. The first performance of the work was given in Leipzig on New Year's Day in 1879, with Joachim as the soloist. The concerto combines two complementary aspects of the composer: that of the artist concerned with the great and serious, as a contemporary critic put it, and that of the lyrical composer of songs. As always Brahms was critical of his own work, and the concerto, long promised, had been the subject of his usual doubts and hesitations. Originally, four movements had been planned, but in the end, the two middle movements were replaced by the present Adagio, music that Brahms described as feeble but that pleased Joachim as much as it has always pleased audiences.
The first movement opens with an orchestral exposition in which the first subject is incompletely presented in the initial bars. Its full appearance is entrusted to the soloist, after the orchestra has offered a second subject and other themes that will later seem eminently well suited to the solo violin. The actual entry of the soloist and the approach to it must remind us of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, with its rather longer orchestral exposition that had so taxed the patience of Viennese audiences 70 years earlier. The cadenza Brahms left to Joachim, whose advice on this and other matters he was willing to heed. The slow movement is splendidly lyrical, based on a melody of great beauty, which is expanded and developed by the soloist and the orchestra, dying away before the vigorous opening of the Hungarian-style finale. This, in rondo form, is of great variety, intervening episodes providing a contrast with the energetic principal theme, leading to a conclusion of mounting excitement.
Writer: Keith Anderson
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