BEETHOVEN VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MAJOR

Conversations between instruments, harmony and articulation all form part of Julia Fischer’s discussion of this joyous third movement

From Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major op.61. Urtext edition, piano reduction, paperbound with marked and unmarked string parts. Ed. Shin Augustinus Kojima. Pf reduction Jürgen Sommer. Vn fingering and bowing Wolfgang Schneiderhan, with cadenzas by Robert D. Levin. Order no. HN326, ISMN 979-0-2018-0326-5. €20.00. Printed with permission of G. Henle Verlag, Munich © 2003

Many violinists respect and even fear Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, but for me that was never the case. By the time I started to play it I’d already learnt ten of his piano sonatas, so I was very familiar with Beethoven as a composer! To play the Violin Concerto after that felt very natural.

In many ways I feel that my career started with this piece when I was twelve years old, and I performed it with Yehudi Menuhin conducting. It is the concerto that I have played the most, and my life as an adult musician began with it too, when I played it on tour with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Neville Marriner.

It’s interesting that Beethoven didn’t give a tempo indication for this third movement. He only wrote ‘Rondo’, which leaves you free to decide for yourself. The speed that you choose will then determine your whole approach. Do you want the semiquavers (s) to sound virtuosic or more melodic, for example? There’s a recording of Menuhin playing it super slowly, and it’s not wrong: nobody said that it can’t be played that way! You can make any interpretation work, as long as you adapt how you bow and articulate. I choose to play it joyfully, with a lot of spirit. It isn’t early Classical Beethoven, or late Beethoven that leaves all Classical and even Romantic rules behind. It’s middle Beethoven and it’s joyful and positive, without any drama or fury.

Pianistic thinking

To me, the form and architecture of a piece are very important, so I think firstly in terms of the score and harmonies – like a pianist – and only secondly in terms of melody and the violin part. I also choose fingerings that give a pianistic clarity, without too many shifts or slides. When I have a melody, I try to play it on one string, especially if the notes are under a slur, and I use finger extensions to avoid audible shifts, as in the passage from bar 151.

Of course, I don’t always want to create a piano-like sound. On the piano, once you’ve pressed down a key, the colour of that note can’t be changed. On the violin, you can create an entire world in one note, right to the very end. In the opening theme in the third movement, for example, you can develop the A in the slurred A–D interval of bar 1 to give a different colour from the tenuto– staccato A–D interval two octaves higher in bar 11. This helps to bring out the different articulations more effectively.

ALL PHOTOS UWE ARENS

THE SOLOIST

NAME JULIA FISCHER

NATIONALITY GERMAN

STUDIED WITH LYDIA DUBROVSKAYA, ANA CHUMACHENCO

RECORDED FOR DECCA, EMI CLASSICS, ORFEO, PENTATONE

‘Your interpretation has to make sense when you take into consideration everybody else on stage with you’

Julia Fischer’s limited edition JF Club edition recording of the Ysaÿe Violin Sonatas was released on vinyl by Hänssler Classic on 20 August 2021.

Knowing the score

To know what the orchestra is doing and what part the violin plays in the whole score is very important, especially in this concerto. Are you an accompaniment? Are you the melody? Your interpretation has to make sense when you take into consideration everybody else on stage with you. After letter A, for example, it’s essential to know that there’s a conversation between the soloist and the woodwind section. It is fun to interact jokily with the wind players in bars 51–56: you can play more, or less, and then they have to reply spontaneously. After this, violinists have a tendency to be nervous about the semiquaver passage from bar 68 and rush, but actually the orchestra has the melody here and the soloist has a less important accompaniment, so you can relax.

From bar 127 the conversation is between the violinist and the bassoon: you play the melody and then the bassoon replies, then it’s you again, and so on. When the bassoon has the melody, it is your job to make that line sound more beautiful. Your accompaniment is only useful if it helps the bassoon to shine more. I use a lot of left hand, to make the semiquavers sound espressivo and cantabile, not like virtuoso passagework.

Searching for a cadenza

For me, the most problematic aspect of the Beethoven Concerto is the cadenzas. As a student I was trained to play Kreisler’s cadenzas, which are fantastic but very Romantic. You can hear that they were written 100 years ago, so I find it strange to perform them now, in the 21st century! There are others by Ysaÿe, Wieniawski, and one by Saint-Saëns that is actually very good, but in the end I always come back to Kreisler, because it’s still the best solution that I have.

What we really need is for a composer today to write a masterpiece for this concerto. I’ve tried many times, and Augustin Hadelich and I even started to send each other ideas for a new cadenza during the pandemic. I wrote a line, then he replied with another, but somehow we lost track of it. I’ve written cadenzas for all the Mozart concertos myself, and I’m happy with those, but Beethoven needs something with more weight. The cadenzas that he wrote for his piano concertos are huge and obviously very important to him, and I still don’t find myself capable of writing something like that.

Interestingly, Beethoven wrote a version of this concerto for piano, and in it he put another big cadenza in bar 92.

I find it strange that violinists never do the same, and it is something that I would like to try in the future.

Entering after the cadenza

It is important to play forte and energetically from bar 280, to give the cellos and double basses the courage to come forward after the cadenza. From here I find the huge diminuendo absolutely amazing, with the pianissimo main theme in A flat major in the solo part, which sounds as though it’s coming from the far distance.

This is the part of the concerto that I enjoy the most, up until letter G.

It is difficult to play the semiquavers from bar 297, because every bar is in a different key until the music finally arrives back in D major in bar 307. It’s very important to bring out the hidden melody notes of the main theme within this, and to find a bowing that makes that possible. I play with separate bows and put weight into the melody notes using the right arm. You also have to make sure that the unimportant notes really are unimportant. That can be hard, especially in bars 299 and 300, where they fall on open strings and are automatically louder than the other notes.

‘What works slowly might work fast, but what doesn’t work slowly won’t work at all’

From the coda to the end

I love to start the coda from G slightly under tempo, so I ask the conductor to pull back by about two per cent, so that it sounds as though the oboe is looking back to say a final goodbye. I return to the original tempo in bar 322 for the crescendo, to bring back the feeling of joy. Then I play as loudly as possible until the end! These semiquavers are against the entire orchestra, as they play the theme and then you have to reply. You need to have the same amount of energy as the whole string section, and you’ll have to work hard to show off against the orchestra. For this and for everything else, slow practice is the key! My mother –a pianist – always said that what works slowly might work fast, but what doesn’t work slowly won’t work at all.

Julia Fischer’s fingerings for the complete Beethoven Violin Concerto are available in the Henle Library: see www.henle-library.com