Sunday Classics: As promised, it's "Sunday Double Concerto Mania"

Violinist Maxim Vengerov plays and conducts the searing slow movement of Mozart's Sinfonia concertante, K. 364, with violist Thomas Powers and the UBS Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, at a Proms concert, Royal Albert Hall, Aug. 13, 2006. [Oops, sorry: The movement is completed here.]

by Ken

Maybe this'll work, maybe it won't. Let's start right out -- give or take -- with some music. (I didn't really mean to lead off in mono, but I couldn't resist the chance to offer the 31-year-old Itzhak Perlman in partnership with the great Mstislav Rostropovich in this live performance.)

NOBODY WHO'S BEEN HERE BEFORE WILL BE
SURPRISED THAT WE'RE WORKING BACKWARDS

- III -

BRAHMS: "Double" Concerto in A minor for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra, Op. 102: iii. Vivace non troppo
Itzhak Perlman, violin; Mstislav Rostropovich, cello; London Symphony Orchestra, Kiril Kondrashin, cond. Live performance in Carnegie Hall, March 7, 1967

MOZART: Sinfonia concertante in E-flat for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, K. 364: iii. Presto
Josef Suk, violin; Thomas Kakuska, viola; Suk Chamber Orchestra, Josef Suk, cond. Supraphon/Vanguard, recorded November 1989

MOZART: Concerto in E-flat for Two Pianos and Orchestra ("Piano Concerto No. 10"), K. 365: iii. Rondeau: Allegro
Vladimir Ashkenazy and Daniel Barenboim, pianos; Philharmonia Orchestra, Vladimir Ashkenazy, cond. Decca, recorded April 1972

Speaking of partnerships, the great Czech violinist Josef Suk's partner in his recording of Mozart's Sinfonia concertante, K. 364, Thomas Kakuska, was the violist of the Alban Berg Quartet (which we've heard a number of times, for example playing the second movement of Schubert's C major String Quintet) from 1981 until his death in 2005; in a moment we're going to hear Suk in collaboration with his longtime friend and colleague, the cellist of the Suk Piano Trio, Josef Chuchro. And in the Mozart Sinfonia concertante, K. 365, we hear Daniel Barenboim -- who preceded his longtime friend Vladimir Ashkenazy into the ranks of near-full-time conducting, graciously playing second piano and ceding conducting responsibility. (In the boxed set of Barenboim's second complete recording of the Mozart piano concertos, Teldec included a DVD of him playing the first part in Mozart's Two- and Three-Piano Concertos, with András Schiff playing the second part and conductor Georg Solti manning a keyboard in the Three-Piano Concerto.)

Now, as to the music, we heard the finale of Mozart's K. 364 in last week's Saturday-night preview, in the last of three recordings made by the only first violinist and violist the Amadeus Quartet had in its 40-year history, Norbert Brainin and Peter Schidlof (whose death in 1987) brought the quartet's remarkable history -- all that time with the same four members -- to an end. Then we heard the whole thing, many times over, in Sunday's main post, where I pointed out that K. 364 really has no counterpart elsewhere in Mozart's vast output, including even its seeming companion piece, another "double concerto" -- this one for two pianos, also in E-flat major, K. 365, of which we heard the first movement.

I talked briefly about the seeming oddity that "double" concertos are such a rarity, or at least really good ones are. Mozart makes it sound so easy in K. 364 -- why, you can distribute musical material to the two "soloists" separately or jointly, doing either similar or contrasting things with it. Piece of cake! The only thing is that after K. 364, setting aside the special case of Beethoven's "Triple" Concerto (for violin, cello, piano, and orchestra), the only real successor is Brahms's great A minor "Double" Concerto, for violin, cello, and orchestra, which we sampled last week and returned to in last night's preview.

Of course writing for two pianos is a wildly different proposition -- you're dealing with two essentially identical instruments, and it's almost easier to differentiate the two "soloists" by sight than by sound. I think, though, that consciously or otherwise even Mozart set significantly humbler musical goals in K. 365 -- more earth-bound than he set in K. 364 and Brahms did in his Double Concerto, and more earth-bound than he set in most of his solo-piano concertos (among which, I remind you, the multiple-piano concertos wound up being numbered, the Three-Piano Concerto as No. 7, the Two-Piano Concerto as No. 10).

MOVING BACKWARDS(ER) . . .

I think the differences are already audible in the concluding rondos of our three double concertos. The musical gap seems to me utterly unmistakable in the slow movements.

- II -

BRAHMS: "Double" Concerto in A minor for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra, Op. 102: ii. Andante
Josef Suk, violin; Josef Chuchro, cello; Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Zdeněk Košler, cond. Praga, recorded live, 1976

MOZART: Sinfonia concertante in E-flat for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, K. 364: ii. Andante
Norbert Brainin, violin; Peter Schidlof, viola; English Chamber Orchestra, Benjamin Britten, cond. BBC Legends, recorded live, Nov. 27, 1967

MOZART: Concerto in E-flat for Two Pianos and Orchestra ("Piano Concerto No. 10"), K. 365: ii. Andante
Vladimir Ashkenazy and Daniel Barenboim, pianos; Philharmonia Orchestra, Vladimir Ashkenazy, cond. Decca, recorded April 1972

FINALLY, MOVING ALL THE WAY BACKWARDS --
TO THE VERY BEGINNINGS

The basic reason I wanted to work backwards through our three concertos is that by Brahms's time the first movement of the concerto has expanded to such enormous size that it almost automatically dominates the later movements. Note that Brahms calls attention to the singularity of the double-concerto form by immediately introducing the solo instruments -- starting, note, with the cello -- in what are essentially written-out cadenzas, normally an end-of-movement feature.

- I -

BRAHMS: "Double" Concerto in A minor for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra, Op. 102: i. Allegro
Isaac Stern, violin; Leonard Rose, cello; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony

MOZART: Sinfonia concertante in E-flat for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, K. 364: i. Allegro
Daniel Majeske, violin; Robert Vernon, viola; Cleveland Orchestra, Christoph von Dohnányi, cond. Decca, recorded May 1991

MOZART: Concerto in E-flat for Two Pianos and Orchestra ("Piano Concerto No. 10"), K. 365: i. Allegro
Vladimir Ashkenazy and Daniel Barenboim, pianos; Philharmonia Orchestra, Vladimir Ashkenazy, cond. Decca, recorded April 1972

(I wanted you to hear at least part of the Stern-Rose-Ormandy recording of the Brahms Double, first because it's a terrific -- and predictably, for these artists, much underappreciated -- performance, and second because, as I think I've mentioned, Isaac Stern seems to me to have had a striking affinity for Brahms.)

NOW MIGHT BE A GOOD TIME TO HEAR OUR
THREE DOUBLE CONCERTOS FRONTWAYS


If I had it on CD, I would have offered EMI's early stereo recording of Mozart's Two-Piano Concerto, K. 365, by pianists Clara Haskil and Géza Anda, with Alceo Galliera conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra. Here's the first movement from that recording.

Even on CD I've still got a bunch of recordings of K. 364, like all of Mozart's masterpieces far too multidimensional to be encompassed by one or two performances, I'd love to share. I really love the later Cleveland recording, made 27 years-plus after the Szell version that more or less set off this whole exploration of K. 364), from which we just heard the first movement: taut, bracing, beautifully explored and finished. (I tend to forget how good it is because it's on a disc with what sounds like an unrehearsed once-through of Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik -- I imagine Maestro Dohnányi saying to the orchestra, "We all know this, ladies and gentlemen; let's just get it done"-- with, in addition, the Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra.)

Even if we decide to go with a perfomance from the famous 1950s Casals Festivals (held mostly in the French Catalan town of Prades, where Casals had relocated in 1939 (following the consolidation of fascist control of Spain), though the 1951 festival was held in nearby Perpignan), on grounds of relative unfamiliarity we could go with a 1953 live performance with the fondly remembered brother-and-sister soloists Joseph (violin) and Lillian (viola) Fuchs rather than the much-circulated 1951 recording with the about-to-turn-31 Isaac Stern and the great William Primrose. But I've listened to the latter a number of times over the last week. It's a bold, probing performance, and it's the one I've settled on for this slot.

MOZART: Sinfonia concertante in E-flat for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, K. 364:
i. Allegro
ii. Andante
iii. Presto
Isaac Stern, violin; William Primrose, viola; Casals Festival Orchestra (Perpignan), Pablo Casals, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded July 5, 7, and 8, 1951

Our complete performance of the Mozart Two-Piano Concerto is the one from which we heard the first movement last week, from Murray Perahia's distinguished self-conducted series of the complete Mozart piano concertos, including both the Two- and Three-Piano Concertos. In this case, I think conductor Perahia is onto something in really keeping the piece moving.

MOZART: Concerto in E-flat for Two Pianos and Orchestra ("Piano Concerto No. 10"), K. 365
i. Allegro
ii. Andante
iii. Rondeaux: allegro
Murray Perahia and Radu Lupu, pianos; English Chamber Orchestra, Murray Perahia, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded June 23-24, 1988

And finally we return to the wondrous Brahms "Double" Concerto. Especially in his American incarnation, and especially in his later years (he was 83 when he made this recording), Bruno Walter had a special feeling for the deep humanity of Brahms.

BRAHMS: "Double" Concerto in A minor for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra, Op. 102
i. Allegro
ii. Andante
iii. Vivace non troppo
Zino Francescatti, violin; Pierre Fournier, cello; Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded Nov. 20, 1959

MUSIC DOESN'T HAVE TO SCALE THE HEIGHTS TO BE
ENJOYED -- BUT WE NEED TO NOTE THE DIFFERENCE

In talking about Mozart's great Sinfonia concertante, K. 364, I've carefully avoided mention of a work that might seem of the same genre, yet another written in the key of E-flat major: the Sinfonia concertante, K. 297b, for a "concertante" group of wind "soloists" -- oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. Apart from the accident of nomenclature, the two works have no more in common than, say, Mozart's greatest piano concertos do with, say the generally much earlier, simpler, and more straightforward violin concertos, or most of with most of Mozart's concertos for wind instruments. (An obvious exception, or at least partial exception, would be the quite late Clarinet Concerto, K. 622.)

Here's the wind Sinfonia concertante.

MOZART: Sinfonia concertante in E-flat for Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Bassoon, and Orchestra, K. 297b
i. Allegro
ii. Andante
iii. Andantino con variazione
Haakon Stotijn, oboe; Bram de Wilde, clarinet; Jan Bos, horn; Thom de Klerk, bassoon; Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, Szymon Goldberg, cond. Philips, recorded Dec. 6-10, 1960

Now this is, let me say quickly, an utterly delightful piece -- elegant, charming, compulsively listenable. Surely no one else could have written it, and we would be much poorer without it. I would say as much in general for Mozart's violin concertos and most of the wind concertos (the obvious exception being the much later Clarinet Concerto, K. 622). And I would say as much for Mozart's Three-Piano Concerto, much-loved of orchestral pension-fund concerts and other gala-type events because the solo parts are manageable by any moderately well-trained pianist, often including an orchestral executive or board member or two. But as I suggested last week, its musical ambitions are more earthbound even than those of the Two-Piano Concerto.

To further complicate, or perhaps simplify, matters, we're going to hear the Three-Piano Concerto in a reduction by the composer himself for two pianos.

MOZART: Concerto in F for Three Pianos and Orchestra ("Piano Concerto No. 7"), K. 242 (arr. for two pianos by the composer)
i. Allegro
ii. Adagio
iii. Rondeau: Tempo di menuetto
Leon Fleisher and Katherine Jacobson Fleisher, pianos; Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Leon Fleisher, cond. Sony, recorded July 16-19, 2008


A REMINDER OF FRIDAY NIGHT'S FLASHBACKS

Friday night I added some live Traviata excerpts with Luciano Pavarotti to my earlier remembrance of Joan Sutherland, and also offered the soundtrack versions of the Mascagni excerpts heard in Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull.

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