Do most violinists use the Joachim cadenza when performing the Brahms violin concerto?
bill carroll
performing the Brahms violin concerto. Perlman uses the Joachin
cadenza. Am I right in thinking this great piece was premiered with
the Joachim cadenza? We just acquired a cd of Jascha Heifetz and the
CSO performing the same great piece, but, Heifetz uses his own
cadenza. Did Yehudi Menuhin, Isac Stern and other great performers
routinely use the Joachim or did they do other things? Thanks very
much.
bill carroll, toronto
Jon Teske
Yes, by far most violinists use the Joachim. I've heard/seen and
sometimes played (in the orchestra) perhaps 50 live performances of
this concerto. I've seen both Menuhin and Stern do it (Stern several
times) and they used the Joachim. I can think of only three
exceptions that I have seen. Milstein and Joshua Bell did their own
cadenzas. A performance at the University of Maryland by my
then-former teacher, Joel Berman, used the Kreisler.
In recordings, of those I have...or did have.
Ulf Hoelscher, Nadia S-S, used the Kriesler
Bell, Milstein their own.
Heifetz' is apparently a hybrid between an Auer and his own
embellishments. (Some notes I have are rather vague on this point.)
Heifetz did the same thing with the Beethoven where Auer is more
directly credited. Anyone got the straight skinny of Heifetz/ Brahms?
Gidon Kremer used a Reger solo piece (normally a stand alone) which
used themes from the concerto.
All the rest that I have use the Joachim.
Ricci has a recording out of the Brahms (and a similar one of the
Beethoven) in which he uses something like a dozen different cadenzas
for each. I have not heard it, but apparently you can program a CD
player to plug in which ever cadenza you wish to hear.
With the Beethoven, the reverse is true. Kreisler prevails with
Joachim a very distant second. I've never heard the Joachim live
(except for playing it myself at home :-) . I've also done the
Joachim with a similarly limited audience. [I'm really an orchestral
player, not a soloist.]
In recordings I've heard the following use it that I can remember...
Szeryng regularly used the Joachim. Arrcado used the Joachim, but in
the program notes they said that he learned it deliberately for that
recording since there were so many with the Kreisler. Ida Handel
also used the Joachim in an early recording I heard 50 years ago.
Heifetz used his own adaptation of Auers. I don't remember what
Milstein used (or even if I have ever heard a Milstein recording of
this work.)
Joseph Suk used one by fellow Czech, Vasa Prihoda.
And then there is the infamous Schnittke cadenza which AFAIK is only
done in public by Gidon Kremer. It is fantastic fiddling, but really
strange. In his second recording he used some other cadenza but I
don't remember which one.
Many folks, like Issac Stern, truncate the last movement Kreisler
cadenza. Oistrakh and Perlman use the whole thing, or at least as
printed in the most commonly available edition. (Violinists usually
have to buy these cadenza separately in sheet music, because when many
of these editions were prepared, the Kreisler was still under
copyright. The widely available Francescatti edition includes the
Joachim. I have also heard that there are actually two Joachim
cadenza sets to this concerto, but if so, I have never seen/heard the
other one. Anyone know anything about this???)
My favorite is Wolfgang Schneiderhan's reworking of the version
Beethoven wrote for the piano version of the Beethoven Violin
Concerto. This version also uses the tympany. I have not yet heard
it, but I understand that the new Isabel Faust recording also uses
this cadenza with some minor reworking.
BTW , a very pet peeve of mine...when I shop for recordings I like to
know which cadenza is being used. Only rarely can you see this
information on the back of a CD Jewel Box when all sealed up. Often
times this information is lacking even inside with the program notes.
Jon Teske, violinist
bill carroll
> On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 14:56:07 -0800 (PST), bill carroll
>
Absolutely fascinating stuff, Jon. Thanks for making this great
effort. The Perlman EMI back cover indicates he Joachim cadenza.
The Heifetz RCA Red Seal back cover makes no mention of the cadenza.
BestStudentViolins.com
including the ones Jon shared with us (Mozart Cadenzas), at:
VIOLIN CADENZAS
http://beststudentviolins.com/sheetmusic.html#vlcadenzas
Jon Teske
Wow Connie, the list is expanding.
Since Cadenza is feminine in Italian, I would guess that the plural
would be Candenze, but I must confess I've never seen that construct
in either Italian or English. It would follow the Viola/Viole model I
should think.
I guess I've never really come to terms with gender in languages
though at some time I've studied three languages with gender (French
Italian, Spanish).
I could never get it in my head that violin (il violino) is masculine
as is cello...violini, celli, and la viola is feminine. You see this
most commonly in music with Italian notation (e.g. most music)
when you see "tutti violini", but "tutte viole" in printed music.
I never noticed this until I started occasionally playing viola in
orchestras.
I only had a year of college Italian and we never got into that degree
of noise in our study Italian also had some funny rules and
exceptions when referring to musical insturments. They speak of
Lo Piccolo and Lo Piano. Those are about the only examples I remember
in which "Lo" is the definite article in place of "Il" or "La".
We were told two things about Romance Languages. They were all the
result of 2000 years of making mistakes in Latin; and, the further you
got from Rome, the simpler the grammar became. Probably true
since Spanish grammar is a lot simpler than the Italian.
Mozart's opera is Cosi fan Tutte (not as commonly seen Cosi fan
Tutti) because the "They all do it" (the translation) is referring to
the two principal female leads, hence the common translation
"Women All Do It." (lest anyone think it purient, the "It" in this
case refers to the fickleness of Fiordiligi and Dorabella, not what
they might do in the boudoir.)
Jon
BestStudentViolins.com
> Mozart's opera is Cosi fan Tutte (not as commonly seen Cosi fan
> Tutti) because the "They all do it" (the translation) is referring to
> the two principal female leads, hence the common translation
> "Women All Do It." (lest anyone think it purient, the "It" in this
> case refers to the fickleness of Fiordiligi and Dorabella, not what
> they might do in the boudoir.)
That brings back a lot of memories, high school in Kansas, singing
that aria, badly, when my bff, an Italian girl from Firenze, an
American Field Service exchange student (Anna Canava - wish I could
find her again), told me how badly I was pronouncing the lyrics.
Something like (in English): Women are weather vanes, laughing or
crying, ever are lying, such is their nature....
Jon Teske
That reminds me of a dressing down I got over my foreign language
accent.
The last language I studied was Spanish, in an intense 12 week (2 6
week sessions) summer program at the Univesity of Maryland about 35
years ago. I had already studied French (my major), Italian (for my
degree requirement...you had to do it in a different language from you
major...go figure) and Arabic which was my professional language for a
while.
When I took the Spanish class, I aced all the written stuff, but La
Professora complained that I spoke Spanish with a French accent.
(probably true, I was well practiced in French vowels.) This was
obviously not intended to be a compliment, but I countered by
responding that I was highly flattered by this remark since my French
professors, some ten years before that, always complained that I spoke
French with a horrid Midwestern accent (also true.) She saw my point
and since I got "A"s in everything else in her course let this point
slide. My Spanish must have been adequate since 20 years after that I
worked in the US Embassy in Mexico City and mangaged to get by just
fine down there and last year we visited Spain and no one laughed too
hard at my Spanish even though Castillano [Spain Spanish] is rather
different from the Latin American Spanish taught in US Colleges. (The
official dialect of choice in US Colleges is Colombian Spanish, now
considered to be the best Spanish, even more so than Castillano.) I
actually got more grief over my English (which normally is impecable
US Midwest radio-speak) because the area we were in was a hotbed of
Bloke ex-pats and tourists and an American was a comparative rarity.
The worst Spanish BTW is Puerto Rican. Even the PRs will tell you
that. I had half of my career working with college educated Puerto
Ricans working right next to me, speaking Spanish all the time amongst
themselves and I could never pick up their lingo.
Jon
>
Roland Hutchinson
> I could never get it in my head that violin (il violino) is masculine
> as is cello...violini, celli, and la viola is feminine. You see this
> most commonly in music with Italian notation (e.g. most music)
> when you see "tutti violini", but "tutte viole" in printed music.
> I never noticed this until I started occasionally playing viola in
> orchestras.
Note also: (una viola) sola; le altre; sole.
I find it extremely annoying when some fool of a copyist or conductor has
marked "gli altri" in a viola part.
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it.
Roland Hutchinson
> Mozart's opera is Cosi fan Tutte (not as commonly seen Cosi fan
> Tutti) because the "They all do it" (the translation) is referring to
> the two principal female leads, hence the common translation
> "Women All Do It." (lest anyone think it purient, the "It" in this
> case refers to the fickleness of Fiordiligi and Dorabella, not what
> they might do in the boudoir.)
"That's what they all do" might be a more idiomatic translation -- and
certainly less open to misinterpretation! (Word-for-word literally, of
course it's "Thus do all".)