5/28 String Quartet 7 with the Juilliard Quartet

Beethoven's 7th string quartet, Opus 59, No.1 ("Razumovsky" 1) has always been one of my favorites.  Composed at the height of his "heroic" phase, this quartet takes many chances and always lands on its feet.  Despite the fact that it actually "offended" a few early performers, now it's one of the bedrocks of the string quartet repertoire.  Here's the Juilliard Quartet in a performance from 1975.

Juilliard String Quartet:
Polling in Bavaria in 1975, at the beautiful baroque library of the former Augustinian Monastery to the south-west of Munich.
Robert Mann violino
Earl Carliss violino
Samuel Rhodes viola
Joel Krosnick violoncello

String Quartet 7 "Razumovsky", in F, Op.59 (1806) No 1
1.Allegro
2.Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando (si bemolle maggiore)
3.Adagio molto e mesto (fa minore)
4.Allegro


Link
More about String Quartet 7 in a previous post HERE.

Here's a rough but interesting rehearsal extract of String Quartet 5, Opus 18, No.5 with an ensemble led by violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz:
(Jascha Heifetz, Carol Sindell, Erick Friedman and Nathaniel Rosen)

Link

1/12 The 10 Essential Beethoven CDs

Sometimes I get asked - What do you recommend as far as essential Beethoven goes?
And someday I'll have to sit down and answer that question.  My knee-jerk response is "All of it", but if you don't feel up to listening to 87 CDs of Beethoven's music in one go, then here's a Top 10 list from "Classical CD Guide.Com.  Their choices are pretty solid and a good place to start when diving into Beethoven's music...here's a sampling:

Top 10 Essential Beethoven CDs (according to Classical CD Guide.com)
(for any artists who I couldn't find on YT, I subbed a pretty good rendition I think.  These are all excerpts (except #1)...you need to buy those 86 other CDs, right?)

1. Symphony 5, Conducted by Carlos Kleiber Herbert von Karajan
(Complete.  Play It Loud.) "The most famous piece of classical music ever written".


2. "Pathétique" and "Moonlight" Piano Sonatas, Alfred Brendel:
"Beethoven's more intimate medium of expression. "
(Moonlight 1st movement)


3. "Razumovsky" String Quartets Takács Tokyo Quartet:
"Revolutionary chamber works. "
(String Quartet 9, in C, Op.59 No 3 M4, excerpt)


4. Symphony 9, "Choral", Conducted by von Karajan,
"An inspiring journey, culminating in the "Ode to Joy." 


5 Violin Concerto, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Eugen Jochum:
"Inaugurating the era of the Romantic concerto." 


6. Piano Concerto 5, "Emperor" Kovacevich, Davis: Emil Gilels/Kurt Sanderling:
"The king of piano concertos."


7. Symphony 3, "Eroica" Szell    Arturo Toscanini '53:
"A revolutionary symphony." 


8. "Spring" and "Kreutzer" Violin Sonatas  Perlman / Ashkenazy, Heifetz/Moiseiwitsch
"The young composer at his most jubilant."
("Kreutzer" 1st movement)


9. Late String Quartets, Takács Quartet,
"Quartets that break all the rules." 
(Opus 131, Movement 5 - Presto)


10 Late Piano Sonatas, Maurizio Pollini,
"Complex works that set a new standard."
(Opus 111, excerpt)


From a purely musical perspective, I can humbly judge this post to be the greatest blog post in recorded history ;).

9/1 A Cadre of Cadenzas

Beethoven's only Violin Concerto (Opus 61) didn't come with a cadenza. 
It was up to the performer to improvise his own cadenza in those days.  Later it somehow it became the norm to perform a prepared, composed cadenza, so these were no longer improvised affairs.  I think that's too bad, since improvisation never hurt jazz did it?      B eventually retro-actively composed "official" cadenzas for his earlier piano concertos, but he never did one for the violin concerto.  Probably because the violin concerto was not well received when it was first premiered.  He did make an adaptation for piano (which is sometimes referred to as Piano Concerto 6) and composed a cadenza for that version.  However it's a bit tricky to recreate that as a violin cadenza (unless you have 4 arms perhaps).

So I thought it might be interesting to compare several approaches to this cadenza question.  In the below video I present "Classic Cadenzas", cadenzas which were written by such icons as Joseph Joachim (performed by Joseph Szigeti), Fritz Kreisler (Vadim Repin) and Leopold Auer (with Jascha Heifetz).  The Joachim and Kreisler cadenzas are the most performed cadenzas for Opus 61.


The next video presents "Cadenzas by Violinists".  When a violinist composes his/her own cadenza, it is probably closest to the original concept of a spontaneous improvisation.  What we have here are cadenzas by Joshua Bell, Sayaki Shoji and Nathan Milstein.


Finally some "New Approaches".  Gidon Kremer performs Alfred Schnittke's post-modern, ironic "homage" cadenza, Anke Schnittenhelm performs Sergio Cárdenas' "modern" cadenza, and Patricia Kopatchinskaja performs a transcription of the adapted piano concerto cadenza mentioned above, but with overdubbing to account for the extra violin part (in concerts, the concertmaster performs the 2nd violin part). 


Actually Wolfgang Schneiderhan has made a single violin adaptation of the piano cadenza as well, which gets some play these days.


Many other cadenzas have been recorded for B's single violin concerto.  Ruggiero Ricci has a record where he includes 14 cadenzas and you can program your CD player to try out each one (Beethoven, David, Vieuxtemps, Joachim (2 different versions), Laub, Wieniawski, Saint-Saens, Auer, Ysaye, Busoni, Kreisler, Milstein and Schnittke).

Personally, my favorites of the cadenzas above are Kreisler's and the Kopatchinskaja Beethoven adaptation. 

For more information here is an incredibly detailed homage/website to this high-mileage Violin Concerto in D, which includes a listing of every recording and every cadenza ever performed (I think).
Leon Weintraub' Homage to Opus 61

And for some more info about modern performance practice of this work:
The Beethoven Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61: Some 20th Century Viewpoints