Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Harding & Leonidas Kavakos
Brahms and Beethoven are on the menu this evening, with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra joined by world renowned violinist Leonidas Kavakos.
Brahms wrote his Violin Concerto for and in collaboration with his friend, the celebrated violinist Joseph Joachim. He had been impressed by Joachim’s performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in 1848; 30 years later, in August 1878, he wrote telling him to expect ‘a few violin passages’. This was an understatement: Joachim received the vast violin part of what would become the concerto’s first movement. Brahms conceived the work on a symphonic scale, originally in four movements, and although the piece ended up in the more conventional three-movement structure, its character and orchestration retain a symphonic spaciousness. On shortening the work, Brahms wrote: ‘The middle movements are bust – naturally they were the best ones! I’m writing a wretched adagio instead.’ The two discarded movements were used elsewhere, one of them in the Second Piano Concerto.
Joachim was a composer as well as a violinist, and he took pains to assist Brahms with the solo part, not least the details of fingerings and bowings. Brahms regularly posted him chunks of the violin part and the two met up frequently, Joachim playing and rewriting, often introducing more virtuoso elements into the music.
Brahms veered between demanding stricter advice from him and ignoring the proffered ideas. Joachim, though exasperated by this inconsistency, persevered, motivated by the prospect of a dazzling result. He pressured Brahms to have the concerto ready for a New Year’s Day Concert in Leipzig in 1879. Brahms felt the strain towards the end of 1878, writing to his publisher: ‘Done! What is done? The violin concerto! No.’
The concerto’s manuscript, even in its ‘final’ state, includes revisions, some of them written in by Joachim – who also composed the first movement’s cadenza. Brahms may have completed the piece for the New Year’s Day concert but he was nervous about conducting the work, and the initial reception was lukewarm. Joachim performed the piece – with yet more revisions – two weeks later at the Vienna Musikverein. The audience was in raptures, applauding Joachim’s cadenza into the coda. Brahms reported ‘a success as good as I’ve ever experienced’.
The Violin Concerto shares much of its temperament with the composer’s Second Symphony. Both are in D major, and both start with a movement in 3/4 time; there are deeper connections, too, in the way the themes are created and developed. The first movement opens with such sweeping nobility that it could be a symphony, but Brahms balances his forces so that the violin soars above the ensemble.
Even so, the ravishing Adagio, with its delicious dissonant twinges, drew indignation from virtuoso Pablo Sarasate: ‘Does anyone imagine ... that I’m going to stand on the rostrum, violin in hand, and listen to the oboe playing the only tune in the adagio?’ The final rondo shows the influence of the Hungarian or hongrois style, a mixture of Hungarian and gypsy folk styles that Brahms had come to love when Hungarian political refugees passed through Hamburg on their way to the USA in 1848.
The popularity of Beethoven’s Symphony No 6 owes much to its drama, humour and melodic charm, but, for all its captivating ease, this work was revolutionary. In what has since been regarded as a pivotal moment in western music’s journey between Classical and Romantic aesthetics, Beethoven used a clear programme with corresponding musical material, and a five-movement structure instead of the conventional four. The work also has the capacity to be deeply moving, representing a haven of longed-for solace in Beethoven’s isolated, sound-deprived existence.
Beethoven himself added the title Pastoral to the symphony, which is in F major, the traditional choice for pastoral music. He also emphasised that the work is ‘a matter more of feeling than of painting in sounds’, suggesting a more impressionistic than literal approach to his subject-matter.
The first movement, ‘Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside’, opens with a warm, shapely theme, interrupted by a gently insistent wind motif, giving way to a spacious secondary melody. The lilting second movement, ‘Scene by the brook’, includes cadenza-like woodwind solos evoking birdsong, as set out by Beethoven in the score: the nightingale is represented by the flute, the quail by the oboe and the cuckoo by the clarinet.
The comedic third movement is based on Beethoven’s observation of increasingly drunken folk musicians; the bucolic dance frequently gets out of hand, and Beethoven subverts the musical conventions of the time with incomplete phrases and untidy rhythms. This merriment is curtailed by the intervention of the ‘Thunderstorm’, with its timpani-rolls suggestive of thunder and sharp stabs of lightning. But the drama is short-lived and, here at least, Nature is kind, eliciting from the composer a devotional, hymn-like finale: ‘Shepherd’s song. Cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm’.
© Joanna Wyld
Details
Programme and performers
Johannes Brahms Violin Concerto
1. Allegro non troppo
2. Adagio
3. Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No 6, Pastoral
1. Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the
Countryside – Allegro ma non troppo
2. Scene by the brook – Andante molto mosso
3. Merry gathering of country folk – Allegro
4. Thunderstorm – Allegro
5. Shepherd’s Song – Cheerful and thankful feelings
after the storm – Allegretto
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Daniel Harding conductor
Leonidas Kavakos violin
Artist biographies
Based in Amsterdam, the Concertgebouw Orchestra was founded in 1888 and officially received the appellation ‘Royal’ on the occasion of its centenary celebration in 1988. Its patron is Queen Máxima of the Netherlands.
The Royal Concertgebouw is one of the world’s finest orchestras and has long garnered praise for its performances of the music of Mahler and Bruckner. It also upholds a number of time-honoured concert traditions, such as the Passion performance and the Christmas matinee. The orchestra has long worked with a distinguished roster of conductors and soloists; Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and Igor Stravinsky all conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra on more than one occasion. And to this day, the orchestra continues to foster long-term relationships with contemporary composers.
The orchestra has cultivated a very distinct, individual sound, one which is due in no small part to the unique acoustics of its hall, the Concertgebouw. Another determining factor is the influence exerted by the orchestral musicians, and that of the chief conductors, of whom there have been just seven to date: Willem Kes, Willem Mengelberg, Eduard van Beinum, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Chailly, Mariss Jansons and Daniele Gatti. In June this year it was announced that Klaus Mäkelä is joining the orchestra as artistic partner with effect from this season, and will be chief conductor from 2027.
Nikolaus Harnoncourt also played a key role in establishing the orchestra’s reputation in 18th-century repertoire. Iván Fischer became Honorary Guest Conductor at the start of the 2021–22 season, while Pierre Audi is the orchestra’s Creative Partner.
In addition to some 80 concerts performed at the Concertgebouw, the orchestra gives 40 concerts at other major concert halls throughout the world, reaching roughly 250,000 concertgoers every year. The orchestra has further expanded its reach through videos, streaming and radio and television broadcasts, as well as releasing CDs and DVDs on its Concertgebouworkest Live label.
Each year, the Academy of the Concertgebouw Orchestra nurtures young, talented musicians into orchestral players of the highest calibre, while its summer course, Concertgebouworkest Young, brings together talented young musicians (aged 14 to 17) from all over Europe.
The Royal Concertgebouw is co-funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Municipality of Amsterdam, sponsors, funds and numerous donors all over the world. The largest portion of its income is generated by proceeds from the concerts it gives in and outside the Netherlands.
ING, Unilever and Booking.com are the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s global partners.
Daniel Harding is the Music and Artistic Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He was Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris (2016–19) and Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (2007–17), as well as being Conductor Laureate of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with which he has worked for over 20 years. In 2020 he was named Conductor-in-Residence of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande for the 2021–22 and 2022–23 seasons.
He regularly works with the world’s foremost orchestras, including the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bavarian Radio and London Symphony orchestras, Dresden Staatskapelle and the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala. In 2005 he opened the season at La Scala, Milan, with Idomeneo. He later returned to conduct Salome, Il prigioniero, Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci, Falstaff and The Marriage of Figaro. He has conducted Ariadne auf Naxos, Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro at the Salzburg Festival; The Turn of the Screw and Wozzeck at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Bavarian State Opera, Munich; The Flying Dutchman at the Berlin State Opera; The Magic Flute at the Vienna Festival; Pelléas et Mélisande at the Vienna State Opera and Wozzeck at the Theater an der Wien. He is closely associated with the Aix-en-Provence Festival, where he has conducted new productions of Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni, The Turn of the Screw, La traviata, Eugene Onegin and The Marriage of Figaro.
The latest addition to his wide-ranging, award-winning discography is an album of Britten song-cycles with tenor Andrew Staples.
This season he embarks on major tours with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Bavarian and Swedish Radio Symphony orchestras; he also appears with the Berlin Philharmonic in Berlin and Baden-Baden, makes debuts with the Cleveland Orchestra and Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and returns to the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Filarmonica della Scala, Dresden Staatskapelle and to the Vienna State Opera for Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci.
In 2002 he was awarded the title Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government and in 2017 nominated to the position Officier Arts et Lettres. In 2012 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. In 2021 he was awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours. In addition he is a qualified airline pilot.
Leonidas Kavakos is recognised across the world as a violinist and artist of rare quality. He works regularly with leading orchestras and conductors and appears as a recitalist in the world’s most esteemed recital venues and festivals.
He has developed close relationships with major orchestras such as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and Leipzig Gewandhausorchester. He also works closely with the Dresden Staatskapelle, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic and Budapest Festival Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala.
In recent years, he has also developed a strong profile as a conductor, appearing with the Israel and New York Philharmonic, the Dallas, Danish National, Houston and Vienna Symphony orchestras, Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Filarmonica Teatro La Fenice.
This season he is Artist-in-Residence with the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España, with which he appears as both violinist and conductor. He also tours Europe with Yuja Wang, as well as returning to the US with regular recital partners Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma. Tonight’s concert is part of an international tour with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Daniel Harding, and other orchestral engagements include returns to the Czech, New York and Vienna Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and NDR Hamburg. He will also conduct the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, RAI Torino and the Minnesota Orchestra. He makes two extensive visits to Asia, including a residency at the Tongyeong International Festival, in addition to a series of recitals in Japan and South Korea where he will perform Bach’s Partitas and Sonatas, following the release of his critically acclaimed album Bach: Sei Solo earlier this year.
Other recent additions to his prize-winning discography include two albums of Beethoven symphonies in trio arrangements with Emanuel Ax and Yo-Yo Ma.
Leonidas Kavakos was born and brought up in a musical family in Athens, a city where he curates an annual violin and chamber-music masterclass, attracting violinists and ensembles from all over the world.
He plays the ‘Willemotte’ Stradivarius violin of 1734.
