Pinchas Zukerman – Marc Neikrug
BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata, Op.24
BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata, Op.30 No.1
BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata, Op30 No.2
9 September 2000
PLAY JANÁČEK String Quartet No.1 ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata –
Do you recognise that music? It isn’t Beethoven, is it? Actually, it’s from a string quartet by Janáček. If I give you the title you may begin to guess what it has to do with tonight’s concert. The string quartet is called The Kreutzer Sonata. No, it isn’t named for the Beethoven sonata for violin and piano known as the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata. It’s named after a little book, a novella, by Tolstoy. Tolstoy called his book The Kreutzer Sonata because the pivotal episode in the book occurs during and after a performance of that Beethoven sonata. I hasten to add that there won’t be a performance of the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata in tonight’s concert, and that the recital you’re going to hear won’t be like the one described in Tolstoy’s book. But bear with me, on both these points. Tolstoy’s novella The Kreutzer Sonata is really a diatribe against the bourgeois conventions of relationships between the sexes and marriage. It is a story told to the narrator by a man he meets on a train, who tells how he came to murder his wife in a fit of jealous passion. And this jealousy was brought to a head by his wife’s music making with a violinist. The violinist’s name was Trukhatchevsky.
Not Zukerman – any resemblance with real living characters is entirely fortuitous. The husband in the story had once played music himself, but being a merchant, had given it up. His wife, however, was a good musician, a pianist. He introduced the violinist Trukhatchecksy to his wife, and the talk immediately turned to music, and he offered his services to accompany her on the violin – note this phrase – to accompany her on the violin. ‘That morning, as during the whole of the later period, my wife looked wonderfully elegant, attractive, and provokingly beautiful. It was clear that he pleased her from the very first. Besides, she was also rejoiced at the prospect of being accompanied by him on the violin - a pleasure she relished so much that she’d hired a musician from one of the theatres to accompany her…He, eyeing my wife as all immoral men gaze at pretty women, feigned to be exclusively interested in the theme under discussion...an electric current appeared to bind them… so that when she blushed he blushed, and when she smiled he also smiled….And I invited him to visit us in the evening and bring his violin with him, to accompany my wife…he played splendidly…I was enduring indescribable torments through jealousy, the whole evening.’ Anyway, the violinist and the wife played together often, and the husband, in spite of his jealousy, arranged a musical evening, at which his wife and the violinist played Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata: ‘he brought in his violin, opened the box, took off the covering which had been worked for him by a lady, and began to tune it…my wife took her place at the piano …he took the first accords...
PLAY BEETHOVEN ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata
...his face becoming at once grave, severe, sympathetic, and, as he listened to the notes he was producing, he drew his fingers carefully along the chords. The piano answered him and the concert began….They played Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata; d’you know the first presto? Eh? Ah!’ he cried ‘it’s a strange piece of music, especially the first part. Music generally is a strange thing…Beethoven, for instance, in the case of the Kreutzer Sonata – knew quite well why he was in that mood; it was that mood which determined him to do certain things…It is indeed a terrible weapon in the hands of those who know how to use it. Take the Kreutzer Sonata, for instance. Is it right to play that first presto in a drawing-room to ladies in low dresses? To play that presto, then to applaud it, and immediately afterwards to eat ice-creams and discuss the latest scandal? Such pieces as that should only be performed in rare and solemn circumstances of life, and even then only if certain important deeds that accord with the music are to be accomplished…At any rate the piece had a terrible effect on me…All the people I knew, my wife and he among the number, appeared in an entirely fresh light. After the presto they played the splendid but traditional andante, which has nothing new in it, with the banal variations and the very weak finale. Then, at the entreaty of the guests, they performed an elegy of Ernst and several other light pieces, all good in their way, but which did not make even one hundredth part of the impression on me which the first piece produced’.
Well, the recital you hear tonight may not have this effect on you. Part of the reason I gave you this story from Tolstoy is that some of you may have wondered, before coming to this concert tonight, why an all-Beethoven program of violin and piano sonatas doesn’t include his most famous sonata of all. I remember when I was getting to know music that my great aunt, who was a lover of music and a keen concert goer, used to talk to me about the Kreutzer Sonata. She knew, I suppose, that this was the one that would make an impression on a boy of 13 who was already crazy about the Beethoven of the symphonies. It’s one of the two Beethoven Violin Sonatas that have a nickname. The attachment of these nicknames to works is usually a sign of their popularity. A musician might say ‘the Beethoven sonata in A major’ – though actually there are three of those – but a member of the general musical public finds it easier to have a tag – like ‘the Moonlight Sonata’. Anyway, I was certainly on the lookout for a performance of the Kreutzer Sonata, whether on a recording or in a concert. But hearing the Kreutzer Sonata in a concert, in Australia, was perhaps easier said than done.
What I’m going to talk about for the next few minutes is really to make the point to you that you’re lucky to be having a concert like tonight’s – a real recital of Beethoven piano and violin sonatas given by a violinist and pianist who are an established partnership, whose interpretation is the fruit of long experience playing the music together.
Let me tell you about a concert I went to in Melbourne, sometime in the early 1970s. The violinist was Ruggiero Ricci, and the concert concluded with the very same sonata that forms the second half of tonight’s concert, Beethoven’s C minor sonata Op.30 No.2:
PLAY BEETHOVEN Op.30 No.2: ending
It makes a very strong ending, doesn’t it? But I remember that it was greeted by polite applause – enough of it to get an encore. And that’s what the audience – or most of them – were really waiting for. Because Ricci came on and began to play some of the showy, virtuosic music he was famous for, Paganini Caprices and the like, whereupon the audience went wild! It’s what happened in the drawing room after the Kreutzer sonata, in Tolstoy’s story. And it’s probably what happened when Beethoven gave the first performance of the Kreutzer Sonata, with the ink still drying on the pages of the music, with the mulatto violinist George Bridgetower, in Vienna. It was Bridgetower’s Vienna debut. He and Beethoven certainly weren’t an established partnership, and soon after they had a quarrel – apparently over a woman. That Kreutzer Sonata certainly seems to spark off jealousy! And that’s why it has the name it does – in a fit of pique, Beethoven dedicated it not to Bridgetower, but to another famous violinist, Rodolphe Kreutzer. The very interesting thing to note about this is that the sonata was designed to show off the violinist. A bit of history.
Tolstoy’s story is set in the Russia of the late 19th century, and the idea of the violin and piano partnership is still the same as in Beethoven’s day. The violinist is hired to accompany the pianist. But notice the title Beethoven gave the Kreutzer sonata: ‘Sonata for the pianoforte and an obbligato violin – obbligato meaning equal and necessary – and the title goes on ‘much in a brilliant and concertante style, almost like a concerto’. A most unconventional sonata, in other words. And not out of place in a virtuoso violinist’s recital. Whereas violin sonatas are usually chamber music, and that’s what Musica Viva presents. Or does it? Here we need a little aside on the history of concert giving in Australia. That recital by Ruggiero Ricci I went to was presented not by Musica Viva but by the ABC. Ricci played concertos with the orchestras on the same tour. As a matter of interest, I consulted the ABC’s cards which record all the performances they present, and I found that between 1960 and 1986 there were at least 25 performances of the Kreutzer Sonata in ABC Recitals, then nothing until 1995 when John Harding played it with Stephen McIntyre. You see, when Musica Viva started up, they came to a kind of informal agreement with the ABC. Any chamber music with more than two performers would be Musica Viva’s territory. That gave them piano trios, string quartets and so on. Anything with two or fewer was the ABC’s territory, and was called a recital. That enabled the ABC to present recitals by the artists who toured for it playing concertos. And they did, lots of them.
Sometimes it was an established partnership – I note, for example, that Yehudi and Hepzibah Menuhin played the Kreutzer together for the ABC in 1962. More often the visiting fiddler was teamed up for the tour with a local pianist. I remember Itzhak Perlman and Romola Costantino in Sydney in the early 1970s, with Cho-Liang Lin, then a student of Robert Pikler’s at the Sydney Con, sitting in the cheapest, closest seats in the organ gallery of the Sydney Town Hall. Perlman played Paganini Caprices as encores, and Jimmy Lin’s eyes went out on sticks!
But enough of the ghost at tonight’s concert, that Kreutzer Sonata which won’t be played. But with one parting remark. When I did get to hear it, I found it strange and wonderful, like Tolstoy’s jealous husband. But not as lovable as another Beethoven sonata I had discovered in the meantime. And that one IS on tonight’s program! You see, at the risk of being boringly personal, I fell in love with Mozart violin sonatas before I did Beethoven, because I was given a recording by one of my musical heroes, the violinist Nathan Milstein, which I still have, and here he is playing a Mozart sonata;
PLAY MOZART K.304 (Milstein)
From that, it was only a small step to bed entranced by this:
PLAY BEETHOVEN Op.24 opening
It was a very bad habit, in the days of vinyl LPs, to play passages over and over again, but I did – the opening of that Beethoven sonata for one. I was amazed by its feeling of simple inevitability. And yet it isn’t a memorable tune like a pop song. It taught me a lot about Beethoven’s composing to discover, years later, that Beethoven’s sketch books contain many drafts of that opening, and that the early ones are more complicated. Like a sculptor chipping away unwanted material, Beethoven arrives at the theme which feels as if it couldn’t have been created in any other form. And notice that even when the music has this relatively intimate chamber-musical feel, the violinist presents the theme first, with the piano accompanying, whereas Mozart, in his sonata, has the instruments presenting the theme together, in unison. Mozart’s sonata almost makes sense without the violin part. Beethoven’s doesn’t. This sonata has a nickname, too – the ‘Spring’ sonata – a name given it by a publisher. Now here’s another Beethovenian feature, and for the first time:
PLAY BEETHOVEN Op.24: Scherzo (Busch/Serkin)
It’s a scherzo, all over in one minute. There’s plenty more in that minute for you to discover, or re-discover, in the concert. That great musical partnership, incidentally, was Adolf Busch and Rudolf Serkin, recorded in 1933. Notice I’ve been talking a lot about recordings. How could you not notice? I shouldn’t be embarrassed about that.
You’ll notice that Musica Viva now have a section in their printed concert programs, called Further Exploration, which actually suggests recordings with which you can follow up your attendance at the concert. And why not? Remember Tolstoy’s story? The wife had such a passion for being accompanied on the violin that she hired a professional violinist from the theatre orchestra to play with her. If you can play well enough to attempt the violin or piano part in a Beethoven sonata, you can do this too. But most of us can’t. So recordings can help us a lot. Or more concerts like this one. Perhaps I can share with you my new enthusiasm. Back in the days of 78 rpm recordings, you got to know one piece at a time. For example, you could buy the Kreutzer Sonata played by Cortot and Thibaud, or by Huberman and Ignaz Friedman, who ended his life living in Serpentine Parade, Vaucluse, Sydney. Then when another set of discs of a Beethoven sonata came out, you could spend some time living with that. With LPs – my era – you usually got two sonatas at a time, though I remember my first recording of the Spring Sonata was a 10-inch Supraphon played by the Czechs Plocek and Palenicek – and very good it was, too. But with LPs came the boxed set, what the French call an intégrale: ALL the Beethoven violin sonatas, and easier to buy as a box than separately. Now be honest – when you own such a box, or as in my case several – you don’t play all the sonatas equally often. Sometimes you need a stimulus to put one of them on. When Musica Viva asked me to write the notes and give the talks for Pinchas Zukerman and Marc Neikrug’s concerts, they told me there were three sonatas.
I could have sung the opening of two of them on the spot. But the third? Op.30 No.1 in A major. I really couldn’t remember anything about it. So I started reading, not listening. And the first thing I discovered was that the Kreutzer Sonata was to be the ghost at the concert. You remember this:
PLAY BEETHOVEN Op.47: Finale
The finale of the Kreutzer Sonata. But not originally. Beethoven was in a hurry to get the sonata ready for his concert with Bridgetower, so he took the finale from a sonata he had already composed in the same key, A major, and made it the finale of the Kreutzer. Saved copying time! Beethoven’s pupil Ries remembered that Beethoven had him called one day at half past four and said ‘Copy the violin part of the first Allegro for me quickly’ – his usual copyist was already hard at work. The piano part was only sketched in here and there. The theme with variations second movement Bridgetower had to play from Beethoven’s own manuscript at his concert in the Augarten at eight in the morning, because there was no time to copy it.
Sight-reading at the concert. Things have changed, haven’t they? On the other hand, Ries goes on, the violin and piano parts of the last allegro were very beautifully copied because it had originally belonged to the first sonata with violin dedicated to the Emperor Alexander.
Beethoven later substituted the present variations, because the other movement was too brilliant for this sonata.
Here’s how the substitute begins:
PLAY BEETHOVEN Op.30 No.1: 3rd mvt
But what struck me most in this sonata, when I began to listen to it from recordings, was – I suppose you could say – how utterly unlike the Kreutzer Sonata it is. Whereas that piece has both instruments saying, one after another, ‘I’m here! Take notice!’ this other sonata, in the same key, begins as though the listener entered in the middle of a conversation:
PLAY BEETHOVEN Op.30 No.1: opening
I can’t remember ever having heard this sonata in a concert. Perhaps that’s because violin piano duos sense that it is music written at least as much for the enjoyment of the players as for their listeners. It will be fascinating to hear it in a concert – sensitively programmed so that the audience is already won over by a somewhat more extrovert sonata, the Spring Sonata, and with something still to follow, after interval. And what is that? Someone told me a nice story the other day about a schools concert. The conductor came out to the podium explained that the piece to be played was Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, which was a piece for orchestra with a violin soloist. Well, he said, we have the orchestra, and the conductor. What’s missing? There was the usual giggling then one child put up a hand and said ‘Beethoven!’. True. Well, we can’t have him here tonight in person. But if he had been here, I would have liked to hear him play. Not the violin, though he could play it, which is interesting. Beethoven’s violin playing was described by his pupil Ries as ‘dreadful music’. No, I would have liked to hear him play the piano. And especially in the sonata after interval, which seems so typical of what Beethoven brought to piano music which was new and startling. I wonder what it would have sounded like? The Violin Sonata is in C minor, so perhaps like a Beethoven piano sonata in that key. Here’s about as close as we can get: Geoffrey Lancaster, playing on a copy of a Walter fortepiano made in Vienna in 1795:
PLAY BEETHOVEN Piano Sonata Op.10 No.1: beginning (Lancaster)
Now here’s the beginning of the C minor Violin Sonata:
PLAY BEETHOVEN Op.30 No.2: beginning
The great sonata which begins in this way really makes a better conclusion for the concert than would the Kreutzer Sonata. In the first place, it is more even in quality – all four movements are very fine and striking. But unlike the Kreutzer it doesn’t aspire to be more than chamber music – to be ‘almost like a concerto’. The Kreutzer is really better programmed with other music, whereas this C minor sonata fittingly crowns a concert entirely devoted to Beethoven violin and piano sonatas.
Yet it shows both violin and piano at full stretch. Tolstoy’s characters must have been very good, to attempt the Kreutzer. So must Pinchas Zukerman and Marc Neikrug be, to attempt this sonata in C minor. There’s a Russian connection here, too. Beethoven dedicated the three sonatas of Op.30 to Tsar Alexander of Russia. The Russians were allies of the Austrians against Napoleon. Beethoven’s link with the tsar was through his Russian aristocratic patrons in Vienna, Prince Lichnowsky, and Count Razumovsky, who was a good enough violinist to play second violin, when he felt like it, in Schuppanzigh’s string quartet, which he paid to be his in-house string quartet in his palace. These people really listened to music, as we do. They were well ahead of the reviewer who described Beethoven’s first set of violin sonatas as ‘strange, difficult, learned, unnatural, and unmelodic’. The old turf wars in Australian music are over, and Musica Viva is allowed to entice you to an all-Beethoven evening of violin sonatas. And they know how you’ll listen. You are permitted to have an ice-cream in the interval, but you won’t be like the young Count P…., who when Beethoven and Ries were playing together, ‘spoke so loudly and freely with a beautiful lady in the doorway to the next room that, after several attempts to restore silence had proved futile, Beethoven suddenly pulled my hand away from the piano in the middle of the piece, jumped up, and said very loudly: “I will not play for such swine”. All attempts to bring him back to the piano failed…This, to everyone’s displeasure, put an end to the evening’s music’. Now, to everyone’s pleasure, the evening’s music is about to begin.
First presented at a Musica Viva concert in Melbourne, 9 September 2000