Violin Concerto by Johannes Brahms

Such incidents of an audience getting out of control remained the exception in the concert hall – especially in the 19th century, when there was still a broad consensus about the (tonal) language of music. Of course, opinions differed after the Leipzig premiere of Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto on New Year’s Day 1879, particularly regarding its symphonic structure or the, as some critics complained, ungratefully difficult violin part – the phrase »concerto against the violin« soon began to circulate. Ultimately, however, these were cultivated discussions among connoisseurs, while the audience embraced the work and its memorable melodies with immediate enthusiasm.

There was also a musical authority on stage as the soloist of the first performances. The Hungarian-born Joseph Joachim was not only beyond any technical doubt as a violinist; he had also earned great respect as an advocate for demanding compositions for his instrument, far removed from mere displays of virtuoso showmanship. His lifelong friend Brahms valued Joachim’s expertise on the violin so highly that he discussed the solo part of the emerging concerto with him in detail. As a pianist, Brahms was sometimes unsure about the practical possibilities of fingerings, special effects, and virtuosic passages on the violin. He even left the great solo cadenza in the first movement entirely to the individual performers – resulting not only in Joachim’s own magnificent and frequently performed cadenza, but also in many others created by violinists who followed him.

As in his music more generally, Brahms intertwined the solo part and the orchestra in the Violin Concerto to form a motivically dense and unified whole, earning the work the nickname »a symphony with an obbligato violin.« Indeed, at an early stage of the composition, Brahms considered a four-movement symphonic form, which he later realized in his Second Piano Concerto. Instead, the Violin Concerto is more closely connected to the tradition of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. There, the violin must wait through a long orchestral introduction before entering the scene with a virtuoso fantasy and finally presenting the first theme.

As in Beethoven’s concerto, this theme in Brahms’ work is lyrical and self-contained – music as a natural state of origin and innocence, which survives the conflicts of the central section and returns after the cadenza in a moment of almost heavenly beauty. For this, Brahms (like Beethoven) chose the »pastoral« key of D major, allowing the full spectrum of the violin’s overtones to unfold and creating a direct connection to his recently composed Second Symphony, also written in D major.

The beginning of the second movement sets the mood with an extended oboe solo that delays the violin’s entry for what feels like an almost teasingly long time. And it is only in the closing rondo that Brahms yields to expectations of a popular finale, by having the solo and tutti »appear« as a Hungarian band, as he remembered them from Vienna or from his early concert tours to Hungary. This was certainly intended as a tribute to the dedicatee, Joseph Joachim, but perhaps also as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the contemporary »Hungarian craze«: it was in this spirit that Max Bruch had already written his Concerto in G minor and Joachim his own »Concert in Hungarian Style«.

Thomas Adès’ Opera The Tempest

Scandals are often a furious reaction to youthful rebellion against the establishment. Igor Stravinsky was 30 years old when his Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) provoked such heated reactions, while Thomas Adès was only 24 when, in 1995, he brought the erotic escapades of a Scottish aristocrat to the stage in Powder Her Face, sparking debates about the limits of what could be portrayed in theatre.

For his second opera, Adès turned to a classic work of English drama: William Shakespeare’s late play The Tempest. In her libretto, Meredith Oakes adapts the original story of the magician Prospero, who was overthrown as Duke of Milan by his brother and now rules over a remote island, seeking revenge on those who wronged him. In 2004, Tom Cairns staged the world premiere at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London – a grand theatrical event (this time universally acclaimed) featuring a large ensemble of soloists, choir, and a richly orchestrated musical setting.

The lively, entertainment-inspired style of Powder Her Face gives way in The Tempest to an almost classical approach, through which Adès demonstrates his awareness of tradition, his boundless imagination for sound, and his exceptional understanding of the human voice – including an extremely demanding coloratura role for the spirit Ariel.

In the concise overture, he evokes the title’s storm in an almost Baroque manner: the storm that causes the ship carrying the Milanese court to founder off Prospero’s island. Above surging strings, flashes of brass lightning strike; amid the thunderous sounds of bass drum and thunder sheet, the abyss of the sea seems to open.

It is a brilliantly crafted opening to an opera that has also been performed in Germany and can currently be experienced at the Staatstheater Kassel.

Igor Strawinskys Le sacre du printemps

The scandal surrounding the premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le sacre du printemps had many contributors. One of them was the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev – a dandy, an art enthusiast, and the founder and director of the celebrated ballet company, the Ballets Russes. For Diaghilev, scandals created the public attention needed for his vision of a new form of dance theatre, in which modern choreography, visual art, and contemporary music would embody the spirit of the age.

Artists such as Léon Bakst, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and the Russian painter Natalia Goncharova created stage designs for Diaghilev’s productions, gaining some of their first experiences in theatre. Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev, and many others composed new scores. Yet the musical star of the Ballets Russes was Diaghilev’s compatriot Igor Stravinsky, who shaped the company’s musical identity from The Firebird (1910) to Apollo (Apollon musagète, 1928).

For the production at the newly opened Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Stravinsky proposed a theme that seemed to be in the air before the First World War: according to the composer, the idea came to him in a dream – a vision of a prehistoric community in which primal instincts, sexuality, and violent rituals were expressed without the restraints of civilization. Diaghilev asked the stage designer and ethnographer Nicholas Roerich to develop this idea into a scenario unlike anything previously seen in the history of dance. Roerich wrote to Diaghilev: »The first scene should transport us to the foot of a sacred hill, where Slavic tribes have gathered to celebrate spring.« Here, solemn rituals take place, celebrating the awakening of the earth. Finally, a chosen victim is selected, »who immediately performs her final dance before the elders. At the end, the grey-bearded elders dedicate the sacrifice to the god Yarilo.«

This was no longer a narrative ballet in the classical sense, but rather a sequence of large-scale tableaux and actions that demanded a completely new language of movement. For this purpose, Diaghilev engaged the young dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, who was also his romantic partner. Nijinsky developed a grounded style of movement without pointe shoes and graceful turns, instead using geometric, block-like group formations.

»Amid unbearable toothache«, Stravinsky completed the score at the end of 1912 in Clarens on Lake Geneva. The composition calls for a huge orchestra: 25 woodwind instruments, 19 brass instruments, an extensive percussion section, and strings divided into multiple parts. The archaic and instinctive nature of the scenario inspired the composer to create a startlingly modern sound world.

Melodic elements, such as the famous opening bassoon solo, were taken from Slavic folk music collections. Yet the defining features of the work are its extremely tense (though not »atonal«) harmony and, above all, its overwhelming rhythmic force – culminating in the final scene with a single chord repeated 59 times.

Pierre Monteux conducted this highly complex music at the premiere with remarkable focus and calmness, »like a crocodile« (Jean Cocteau), while behind him the Parisian elite audience transformed into a crowd of uncontrollable rioters.

Michael Struck-Schloen

Born in Dortmund in 1958, Michael Struck-Schloen studied musicology, German literature, and art history. He works as a freelance author for newspapers, specialist journals, and public broadcasting. Many listeners of WDR also know him as a presenter.