 
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
|
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
184.61.127.46
Does anyone know where to find Eduardo Hanslick's complete review of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto? I can't find it online.
Follow Ups:
Was the original really impossible to play?
I for one don't believe that Leopold Auer declined publicly to play the concerto Tchaikovsky had dedicated to him because it was too difficult from a technical standpoint.
Auer was interviewed in 1912:
Warmly as I had championed the symphonic works of the young composer (who was at that time not universally recognized), I could not feel the same enthusiasm for the Violin Concerto, with the exception of the first movement; still less could I place it on the same level as his purely orchestral compositions. I am still of the same opinion. My delay in bringing the concerto before the public was partly due to this doubt in my mind as to its intrinsic worth, and partly that I would have found it necessary, for purely technical reasons, to make some slight alterations in the passages of the solo part. This delicate and difficult task I subsequently undertook, and re-edited the violin solo part, and it is this edition which has been played by me, and also by my pupils, up to the present day. It is incorrect to state that I had declared the concerto in its original form unplayable. What I did say was that some of the passages were not suited to the character of the instrument, and that, however perfectly rendered, they would not sound as well as the composer had imagined. From this purely aesthetic point of view only I found some of it impracticable, and for this reason I re-edited the solo part.
# # #
I think that Auer was, in reality, simply not comfortable with the structure of the piece, and also with its "tone" in the Literary sense, which is the attitude of the author toward his subject matter, as revealed by his or her specific word choices.
Let me try to reduce this to an Elevator Pitch:
"Tchaikovsky wrote a concerto an Extrovert (like Heifetz) would love;
but... Auer was an Introvert."
There's a recurring motif (example above) of the same "rhythmic germ" repeated quite a few times. That motif has always struck me as a bunch of drunk peasants trying to dance a Circle Dance, and slipping and falling.
All in all, taking Tchaik's Vln Cto as a "tone painting" of a rural fair seems at least semi-valid. There is more to it than that, of course. The slow movement (I think) cannot be validly criticized (for what it is).
All that said, I think I have heard more than a sufficient quantity of live performances and recordings of the Tchaik to last me forever, and the same is almost as true for the Mendelssohn.
But, the audiences cry out for Warhorses.
john
. . . there ARE quite a few recordings of the "Auer version", which has some substantial cuts in the last movement. Heifetz, in his famous Living Stereo recording of the work with Munch and the BSO, plays the Auer version (even though that performance was spread over an entire LP when it was first released). More and more of the younger violinists have been playing the "original" version without the Auer cuts. And some players (like Vilde Frang in her recording) "pick and choose", taking some of the Auer cuts, but not all!
I'd like to compare it to the Heifetz "Auer" version.
. . . are by J-Fi and Nicola:
You can tell from the third-movement timings how much Auer cut: J-Fi and Nicola both take slightly over 10 minutes, while Heifetz gets through the Auer version in 8:13 (and not just because he's playing faster!). That's a pretty substantial difference. Mullova's 1985 Philips recording with Ozawa gets through the uncut version in 9:42 - that's another good version, although a couple of critics accused Mullova of being an ice princess in this performance ;-) . . . and the engineering, while OK, isn't as good as on the newer recordings.
That Mullova/Ozawa Sibelius recording is one of the best as far as I'm concerned. She is an under-appreciated musician. Her HIP Bach solo violin music (for Onyx) is worth checking out.
But it's her earlier non-HIP version (before she got corrupted by Western degeneracy!) which I prefer!
View YouTube Video
https://robertgreenbergmusic.com/music-history-monday-tchaikovskys-violin-concerto-in-d-major/
Hope that helps.
Dave
Thanks very much!
. . . the complete review? For one thing, I imagine that there must have been other works on the program too?
In any case, talk about racism! The Krauts and Anglo Saxons were masters of it - similar to some of the Kraut comments about the Dvorak Te Deum and other non-Aryan works. Or the guy who wrote (and I'm remembering to the best of my abilities), "Rimsky-Korsakov! The very name suggests a savage whose beard is drenched in vodka!". I found another version of the quote on the ClassicFM site: "Rimsky-Korsakov - what a name! It suggests fierce whiskers stained with vodka!".
BTW, I used to have a copy of Hanslick's "On the Beautiful in Music", which I found pretty vapid. I'm not sure if I still have it - I may have trashed it.
I did some searching myself and found that there is an Eduard Hanslick web site, but I could not find that notorious review of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. It looks like the reviews may be in German in any case.
| FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
