An orchestration by an unknown hand of the Violin Sonata:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK3oWwiTVsQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK3oWwiTVsQ)
...with Leonid Kogan, no less, as soloist. Poor sound, but an interesting arrangement. Opinions?
You don't seem to get much feedback on this, I don't know why. Maybe because the sonata in its original instrumentation is one the most sung violin sonatas in the repertoire?
Anyhow, before starting I should say that I once worked on it with a pianist (except for the second movement which was beyond reach for the pianist--the violin part is quite playable except a very small number of measures with nasty fast passages), so I know it fairly well. Generally I would start by saying that I don't think (this) orchestration adds a lot to the piece and sometimes it detracts.
The first movement with its combination of a very simple fully diatonic theme and complex chromatic harmonies comes across quite well; the orchestration is discreet as befits a movement that mostly goes on in piano (with a few tremendous crescendi in between, here not played tremendously enough IMO). I was surprised at the very moderate tempo Kogan took and was wondering if he would play it faster with just a pianist. Anyhow this forced him into heavy use of rubato to avoid boredom and I did not find this very appealing.
The second movement is the pianist's in the original: From the piano comes the furious energy and forward drive of the movement and the orchestra in this instrumentation could not match a good pianist in this regard, not even close. The matter was made worse again by surprisingly slow tempi--not one tempo, it keeps changing along the way, getting to andante and below in the "sweeter" passages in the middle of the movement. I think this movement in this orchestration is a failure.
By contrast the third movement is dominated by the violin. The orchestra made it clear that the recitative part of it was accompagnato which I liked. The soloist was however not convincingly playing recitative (which would require a style of playing that would mimic speech rhythms). Again the tempo was too slow for my taste and with too much rubato. But I found the orchestra here convincing, beautiful passages for wind players nicely combined with the violin (maybe bit more harp that one would like).
Finally the last movement started slow again, but slipped into a good tempo after maybe 25 measures (fault of the conductor who has to take first turn at the canon theme?). Here I think the orchestration tried to prove too much. This canon, simple as it is has to dominate the happenings, a French horn playing additional melody (which is in fact just part of the harmonic progression) disturbs rather than helps, especially as the orchestra tended to play its share in the canon too soft (not every time, but too often). The beautiful enharmonic changes quoted from the third movement were executed strangely; I can not call this rubato any more, this was just arhythmic.
Summary: A worthwhile effort but also not an easy problem to solve. If a different, i.e. faster and simpler interpretation might change my impression of the orchestration is hard to tell, but as played I think I am going to stick with Franck's original.
That is an excellent assessment - one with which I broadly agree (while being fascinated by the whole idea...)
I actually find it hard to believe this is Leonid Kogan playing. The tone is thin, the intonation occasionally suspect and there are uncharacteristic portamenti of the sort one doesn't usually hear in Kogan's superb playing. I suspect an impostor.
Could be. But let's get back to the music...
I haven't heard this, but I feel bound to say: "What is the point?" The violin sonata needs no orchestration. It is a splendid piece in its own right and the piano part works beautifully with the solo instrument. It would be much more valuable if people who want to orchestrate from a piano score spent their time orchestrating the many violin and piano concerti the full scores and/or parts of which have been lost, leaving only the two piano or piano/violin score as an indication of the composer's intentions.
I think the orchestration has merit - not as a replacement for or completion of the original, but as a complement to it.
A superb suggestion Gareth. Somebody should try to get lottery funding to start such a project so the good people who have completed and orchestrated various works in the past could be commissioned to rescue the various concerti as you suggest. That would be a project indeed!
Quote from: Gareth Vaughan on Monday 08 February 2016, 20:17
I haven't heard this, but I feel bound to say: "What is the point?" The violin sonata needs no orchestration. It is a splendid piece in its own right and the piano part works beautifully with the solo instrument. It would be much more valuable if people who want to orchestrate from a piano score spent their time orchestrating the many violin and piano concerti the full scores and/or parts of which have been lost, leaving only the two piano or piano/violin score as an indication of the composer's intentions.
This was exactly my first thought, but then I figured I better listen to it before making up my mind. It seems clear to me that taking someone's work and put a new spin on it is legitimate work for artists (not just musicians, actually you probably find more of this sort of thing in literature, say a rewrite of "Emma" from the perspective of the secondary heroine). I don't think this orchestration here succeeds very well (differently in the different movements depending on their character). This sonata is different from many others in that it has longish passages for piano solo in it, specially in the first movement. So you get tutti like in a "real" VC. Looking at it that way it was a good piece to chose for this exercise (I can't imagine someone doing this with the Kreutzer sonata, in spite of its "concerto style").
Quote from: Delicious Manager on Monday 08 February 2016, 13:35
I actually find it hard to believe this is Leonid Kogan playing. The tone is thin, the intonation occasionally suspect and there are uncharacteristic portamenti of the sort one doesn't usually hear in Kogan's superb playing. I suspect an impostor.
I don't think portamenti are at all misplaced in this music--and the ones I heard are fine with me. When I took violin lessons I was trained to make shifts as inaudible as possible and this is a useful skill indeed. But I have come around to preferring to place shifts in locations where they enhance the phrasing by being very much heard (=portamento). It is part of the charm of the violin that a robot could not emulate (yet?, hopefully not for a long time). As for intonation, above a certain level of perfection it is a matter of taste (how much you want to deviate from well-tempered, how sharp you want leading notes to be etc. Also, tone is important as an element of expression: Good players alter the tone according to the expression and I think Kogan did that too, though he might have done more of it, e.g. right at he beginning I'd like to hear very discreet vibrato to get a sort of "naive" sound.
From the rather slurry playing I get the feeling Kogan (I'm convinced it is him. Anyway, the performance is included with others by him in the 100-CD "Russian Legends" box from Brilliant Classics) may have slightly over-braced himself in the Green Room before mounting the platform.
This has got me thinking - are there no notable French violin concertos later than Saint-Saens? Someone needs to do some digging, but in the meantime I wouldn't mind hearing an imaginative orchestration of Ravel's sonata.
Quoteare there no notable French violin concertos later than Saint-Saens?
What do you mean exactly? After 1880 (3rd violin concerto) or after 1921 (death of Saint-Saëns)?
Do some well-know pieces, such as Chausson's Poème (1896), Massenet's Méditation (1894) or Ravel's Tzigane (1924) qualify as concertos? I admit that proper violin concertos are not very frequent in late romantic French music. I found Godard's n. 2 (1891), Dubois (1896), Hahn (1928) or Gaubert (1929).
And I'm still waiting for a record of Vierne's Ballade (1926)!
I'm thinking of the standard 3-movement form. From the 50 years after Saint-Saens's No.3 there isn't one that I'd recognize a single note of, although I'll lose no time in getting acquainted with Chloe Hanslip's Naxos recordings of Godard. From the next 50 years or so (if I'm briefly allowed to go there..) the best on offer could be the four concertos by Milhaud (anybody?) and maybe those of Sauguet, Francaix, Jolivet and Martinon. Not exactly Premiership material!
There are two by Lalo, the first in F being particularly fine.
QuoteThere are two by Lalo
As matesic is very specific in his criteria, Lalo's concertos don't qualify...
The Concerto op 20 is from 1873, as is the Symphonie espagnole op 21 (which Lalo didn't name concerto, and which counts 5 movements). The Concerto russe op 29 is from 1879 and has 4 movements...
With such a gaping hole to fill, I'm surprised the 1919 concerto of Henri Marteau doesn't appear to have been recorded. Maybe one of the contestants in the next International Violin Competition Henri Marteau might cause a stir by giving it a go? No, of course they won't! I find his string quartets pretty good, and the clarinet quintet enchantingly quirky.
We have a download of the Marteau VC here:
http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,1543.msg38196.html#msg38196 (http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,1543.msg38196.html#msg38196)
It's a monster of a piece!
French violin concertos are in rather short supply once you leave the classical period. Great ones include Jean Martinon, Serge Nigg, and Joseph Jongen (though he was Belgian). Concerted violin pieces by the French are more plentiful.
Quote
We have a download of the Marteau VC here:
http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,1543.msg38196.html#msg38196
It's a monster of a piece!
... but it would really need a new modern recording with a better soloist. That would be a great task
for winners of the Marteau competition (and could then be released by cpo years later :-).
I'm very grateful for the upload and the prompt, although it makes for a mixed listening experience! The Marteau VC certainly is an epic work calling for epic playing, which I think it gets from Garay. You might think that by this time (1919) Marteau possibly doesn't qualify as a "French" composer, having first become stranded on the wrong side of the trenches and then moved to Sweden, but maybe you can still detect his roots in Franck and Chausson?
I think we have a broadcast of the Marteau concerto (uploaded 22 July 2012), but it would be good if there were a more generally-available recording...
I already made that point, Eric...
I believe I read somewhere that Jules Massenet composed a violin concerto for Marteau. Is there any evidence of this other than that excerpt?
I don't even have that listed at all as existing or lost or anything like that. First I've heard of it.
We've been here before - back in August 2010, when tcutler wrote:
QuoteIt reminds me of a passage from either the Emery or Toskey violin encyclopedias in which it claims Massenet wrote a violin concerto. Tantalizing, but unfortunately untrue. Massenet planned to write a violin concerto, but it never ended up happening.
Let's not go over this old ground again. In fact, back to the Franck, please...
One concerto which fits the criteria is Jaques-Dalcroze's First....a long-winded work but one with many fine passages (1902). There's an excellent recording on Guild. (The Second Concerto is not traditionally constructed.)
Concertos were out of fashion in France around the turn of the century to the extent that there were riots at the Concerts Colonne in 1904. "Supporters of the new, operatic aesthetic attended every concert, interrupting any concertos or similar works with whistles and catcalls. This boycott proved fatal for many works as managers became reluctant to programme new concertos for fear of further disruption. Among the casualties were piano concertos by Widor and Massenet, which were rarely performed again." (Hyperion's Pierne disc booklet.)
Does anyone know more about quite why the concerto form was boycotted? I imagine it was regarded as having its roots in German music and so was unacceptable after France's humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian war.
QuoteOne concerto which fits the criteria is Jaques-Dalcroze's First
Émile Jaques-Dalcroze was not French, but Swiss. He studied in Paris, but he spent all his carrier in Geneva... That's why I did not mention his works...
Thanks Revilod - it's not often that this kind of question gets a plausible answer! In France the piano concerto doesn't seem to have gone so far out of fashion as string concertos (and the symphony?) but I guess the general trend might be seen as reflecting the growth of a lighter French nationalistic style and a rejection of things portentously German.
Thanks for picking me up on my blunder concerning Jaques-Dalcroze, jdperdrix.
As I understand it, immediately after the Franco-Prussian war a belief endured that French musical culture had been debased and trivialised. Operetta had become all the rage. Now, after the war, there was a greater interest in abstract music. Many years later Faure said that he would never have dreamt of composing a quartet or a sonata before 1870. Ironically, then, in an attempt to give French music greater weight, French composers began to produce more works which employed German forms and techniques. There are a number of French concertos from this period but many are too derivative to have endured.
Charpentier's opera "Louise" was an enormous success in 1900 because it was truly French in theme, content and style. German forms such as the concerto were now out of favour again. Hence the 1904 riots.
Is this a fair summary?
Very fair I'm sure, but we're still stuck with the question why major French composers seem to have abandoned the violin concerto as early as 1880! Maybe the genre was considered too "Operettic"!
Perhaps if think who the major French composers were in the period post-1880 we might come up with an answer.
Dare I kick the discussion off with towering figure of Debussy? And might I suggest that form was becoming less important than sound? Did impressionism tend that way? A vast over-simplification, I know, but maybe there's some truth in it...
And did the school of César Franck produce many VCs?
(The history of the string quartet and quintet in mid-19th century France still seems looking into to me despite the absence of Fauré and other especially well-known, major composers - one still has works by Vaucorbeil (pub.1858 by Heugel), the quartets Opp.10 and quintet Op.22 of Deldevez (pub. 1857 and 1864 by Richault), the 3 string quartets of Jacques Rosenhain (published in the 1860s by Richault), etc. and for example. (And Tellefsen's 1st piano concerto was published by Richault in the 1850s. I'm probably misunderstanding something here of course.)
Another over-simplistic generalization might be to suggest that in France the post-1880 generation of composers were mostly also performing pianists, in contrast to the violinist-composers who had dominated the platform during the earlier part of the century.
Well, Michael Stegemann, in his book "Camille Saint-Saens and the French Solo Concerto" lists as many violin concertos (i.e. works with the word "concert/concerto" in the title) from the thirty years before 1880 as the thirty years after. It's true that his is only a representative sample and Stegemann's definition of a "French" concerto is a bit arbitrary but it just seems that the casualty rate for French violin concertos after 1880 was particularly high. With our interest in neglected composers, we know how much music is written but soon forgotten!
It seems a shame to spoil a debate with brute facts, but Stegemann's book does seem to target precisely this issue! I just ordered a second-hand copy from Abebooks for next to nothing. I wonder how much of this music was published?
I've ordered a second-hand copy for less than £1 on Amazon. Interesting...
QuoteWell, Michael Stegemann, in his book "Camille Saint-Saens and the French Solo Concerto" lists as many violin concertos (i.e. works with the word "concert/concerto" in the title) from the thirty years before 1880 as the thirty years after. It's true that his is only a representative sample and Stegemann's definition of a "French" concerto is a bit arbitrary but it just seems that the casualty rate for French violin concertos after 1880 was particularly high.
That would be interesting if I list as many violin concertos as Stegemann. I only cover the years 1894 to 1910 and that is not too much:
1894 Theodore Dubois - VC
1896 Emile Louis Mathieu - VC
1902 Frederic d'Erlanger - VC
1903 Fernand Le Borne (born in Belgium, but worked mainly in France) - Symphony-concerto for violin, piano and orchestra
QuoteI've ordered a second-hand copy for less than £1 on Amazon. Interesting...
So Alan, I would be pleased if you could compare my tiny list with the one by Stegemann and tell me the ones I am missing.
Best,
Tobias
D'Erlanger was really only half French. He became a naturalised Brit.
A 2012 recording of the Dubois concerto is available in mp3 format from amazon.com (not amazon.co.uk). The CD isn't such a bargain as Stegemann's book - used copies can be had for $146.56 or $455.74!
Between 1894 and 1910 Stegemann lists (a representative list only): J.B. Accolay: Violin Concerto in D (1895), J.B. Accolay: Violin Concerto in E minor (1899), Louis Grobet: Violin Concerto in D minor (1899), J.G. Pennequin : Violin Concerto in A minor (1903) and Frederic Guiraud: Violin Concerto in A minor (1909).
I don't know whether all these composers were really French as Stegemann also includes in his "French" list D'Erlanger (only half French as Alan says) and Jaques-Dalcroze (Swiss as I've recently been reminded!)
The book itself (a translation) isn't always illuminating as regards the politics of concerto writing and performing at the time. Stegemann says (P 199) that, "The years between 1871 and World War I brought a new flowering of concertante music all over Europe" but (P 211) he talks about how, in France, concertante music was dying out well before the war. Debussy famously stopped the performance of his Fantaisie ( which was in the traditional three movements) in 1889 because he didn't want to be seen as a musical reactionary. I think , then, that although the renewed interest in abstract instrumental music after the Franco-Prussian War was intended, as Stegemann says (P.199), to ensure French music would "gain international recognition", it didn't last long once Debussy's ideas were beginning to take hold.
Stegemann has some interesting comments on unknown concertos. He is particularly keen on a piano concerto by Leon Moreau (1903), modelled on Saint-Saens' Fourth but poor old Massenet come in for a drubbing, especially that rather attractive "Fantaisie for 'Cello and Orchestra" which he calls "deplorable" and "dull". Harsh!!
Thanks revilod for the information!
I already knew the Grobet concerto but did not know a year of compisition, thanks for that!
I wasn't aware of the violin concertos by Pennequin (who was Belgian by birth btw) and Frederic Guiraud. In fact I could not even find any information about a "Frederic Guiraud". Does the book deliver some biographical information?
The dates given for the concertos are actually publishing dates for the scores. For the Accolay I am not sure if the two latter concerti are really composed in 1895 and 1899 (with the first one created in 1868). I checked worldcat and saw that for example the second concerto in e minor was published in 1895 with the note "edition revue et doigtée par L. Wiemann" (revised edition and fingerings by L. Wiemann). So if there was time for a revision the whole work dates maybe from an earlier time. Does anyone here have more serious information on the work catalogue by Accolay (especially the violin concertos)?
In total, thanks a lot for some new input for my encyclopedia!
Best,
Tobias
I made a little slip, Tobias. I misread the name. Sorry! It was Frederic Giraud, not Guiraud. I was, of course, thinking he had the same surname as Ernest, the composer best known for adding orchestral recitatives to "Carmen". The book says nothing at all about Frederic except that the violin concerto is his Op 12.
Ahh, thanks for the corrections. Frederic Giraud (1827-1917) was indeed a French composer and violinist I see, but if his violin concerto is his op.12 and he was born 1827 it is very unlikely he composed the concerto in 1909. Infact worldcat lists a first release of the score by Hamelle in 1886 and thst just the release. So it is uncertain when the work was really composed.
Re Grobet's 1899-composed violin concerto:
BNF lists its violin/piano accompaniment as having been -published- in 1898 (by Quinzard), so, er, that's odd! (Of course, maybe he composed more than one concerto. That seems a good explanation...)
Ah, ok, "The dates given for the concertos are actually publishing dates for the scores." - yes, I thought that would be true. (Though some libraries do have the manuscripts, and the Widor violin concerto, for example, has not yet been published (to my knowledge) so the only date that one could have would be that on the BNF-held manuscript... but to all generalizations except this one there may possibly be an exception, except when there isn't :D )
Ernest Guiraud in turn had his violin and pf/or/orch caprice which was published- hrm- I think I had an approximate date (from BdlF) for that once... (oh. Worldcat gives Durand, [1884].)
Perhaps more interesting- do the orchestra-accompanied versions of student-intended works by Accolay, Seitz, etc. (sticking to French ones for the porpoises of the conversation) generally come from others or from the composers themselves?
Georges-Jean Pfeiffer (1835-1908) is one mid-century French composer e.g. (besides Saint-Saëns, and an exact birth-contemporary yes- well, year, anyways) who did write several concertos (at least 3 for piano?) and chamber works (2(+?) piano trios (no.2 @ IMSLP as is his piano quartet and quintet), duo sonatas...), though perhaps no violin concertos- would have to check.
de Boisdeffre (1838-1906) comes in a very little later (and wrote 3 violin sonatas, 2 piano trios, 2 piano quintets, etc.)
I think there's a book I saw in passing on chamber music in France in the mid-19th century; I should look again. Besides Alkan's and some other -now- semi-well-known suspects, I mean...
If Alan's copy of Stegemann's survey of French concertante works from 1850 to 1920 arrived as quickly as mine, both he and Revilod will be able to confirm that there is a clear and specific decline in the popularity of the violin concerto after 1900. When you add up the works written in each decade (excluding those of Saint-Saens, who wrote enough to thoroughly skew the sample!) it's very evident that prior to 1880 more violin concertos were produced than either piano or cello concertos. From 1880 onwards piano concertos become and remain the most popular, declining somewhat from their 1880's peak, while violin concertos reach their peak in the 1890's. After 1900 violin concertos are markedly less common than even cello concertos, particularly from 1910 to 1920 when they account for only 1 out of 15 works listed. I haven't yet scrutinized the text to see if Stegemann has a theory to account for this!
Touching on Massenet, I have seen that he composed a violin concerto for Henri Marteau in about 1892?? I have seen mention of it, but nobody seems to know what became of it. I even think I posted an inquiry at the Jules Massenet society without a response. Does anybody have anything to say about it?
It doesn't exist. See earlier in this thread where Alan makes this point - and urges us to keep on topic.
This thread seems to have become a place for everybody to mention their favorite French VCs. I find this a little sad. After all the starting point here was no a VC (the title is a bit of attention grabbing hyperbolic irony--or so I understand it), but a duo sonata.
I'd rather like to know if anyone is aware of similar exercises, French or otherwise, where a small ensemble chamber piece has been orchestrated by the composer or someone else. I think it must have been done, but apparently all of this effort has gone unsung. Justified or not? Is it a good idea to try and if so what qualities are promising in the sonata or trio that has to be chosen?
Actually, I have let the thread run as it has because it has raised the interesting fact of the decline of the French VC in that era - something I hadn't previously realised...
Concerning Matesic's point, if it is true (and it may not be...Stegemann's list is only representative) that fewer violin concertos than piano concertos were written in France (and probably elsewhere) after 1900 I have a couple of suggestions.
1. This was a new era in music. Composers were abandoning traditional functional harmony. New harmonies are going to be found on keyboard instruments rather than essentially single-line instruments like the violin. (Most innovative composers are pianists.) The era of the virtuoso violinist who also composed for his instrument was over; such composers were not innovators.
2. The violin is essentially a lyrical, melodic instrument and composers were less interested in melody. It was, at least for a while, out of fashion. (Compared with Stravinsky's Octet heard at the same concert, Prokofiev's lyrical First Violin Concerto was relatively unsuccessful when premiered in Paris in 1923.)
@Double-A: the most obvious example would be Arthur Hill, most of whose symphonies began life as string quartets. And I think that Théodore Gouvy's G minor Symphony, Op. 87 (his 6th, 7th, or 8th, depending on how and what you count) was essentially and ochestration of a string quartet, too.
Of course, after 1900 the violin concerto was by no means a dead letter in the rest of Europe, nor the US. I hardly need make a list of the dozen or more great concertos that appeared during the first half of the 20th century, most of which could best be described as "late romantic" in flavour. Not one of the dozen was written by a Frenchman, although interestingly some received their premiere in Paris where one must assume they were at least politely received.
Meanwhile the total of what the home team had to offer seems to consist of Pennequin (1903), Giraud (1909), Milhaud (his first concerto in 1927), Gaubert (1929) and the first concerto of Martinon (1937), none of which I've been able to trace recordings of. Robin Stowell in the Cambridge Companion to the Violin singles out the last for honorable mention, but judging from Martinon's later style I doubt it would qualify as "romantic". I think Revilod is right to suggest that it was the essentially lyrical quality of the violin that became emblematic of the romanticism that French composers were determined to reject.
QuoteMeanwhile the total of what the home team had to offer seems to consist of Pennequin (1903), Giraud (1909), Milhaud (his first concerto in 1927), Gaubert (1929) and the first concerto of Martinon (1937), none of which I've been able to trace recordings of.
I already mentioned that the Giraud doesn't date from 1909, only as late as 1889-
Milhaud #1 available on an Orfeo CD
Gaubert available on a Timpani CD
and if you stretch the period of time to 1937 (so maybe 1940) there are several other French violin concertos (I just checked before for the time until 1910):
1928: Andre Pascal
1928: Robert Siohan
1929: Philip Jarnach
1931: Jean Hubeau
1932: Robert Casadesus
1933: Jacque-Dupont
1935: Eugene Bozza
1936: Marcel Delannoy
1936: Germaine Tailleferre
1937: Henri Martelli 1
1938: Claude Arrieu 1
Best,
Tobias
Thanks Tobias, just a few more! The dates suggest that at least amongst "minor" composers interest in the genre starts to pick up again in the late 1920's. Not many of these composers have yet penetrated the pages of imslp but some of their concerti must surely be worth investigating. I gather Tailleferre's was revamped into a sonata with piano - the opposite of what happened with Franck!
OK, now that we've established this, let's return to the VCs which are suitable for discussion here.
Similar to Franck's "violin concerto" are the Grieg "violin concertos" from his violin and piano sonatas and available by Henning Kraggerud (the orchestrator) at Naxos.
I am undoubtedly behind in this, but when do Émile Sauret's two violin concertos date from? I remember coming across a pile of orchestral parts for his works at a music camp I attended in California when I was in high school, and they looked surprisingly substantial.
The VC Op.26 was published in 1884. Don't know about the E major concerto.