Wieniawski's 2nd

June 13, 2016 at 10:59 PM · Check out the difficulty level at the following site:

http://coloradoallstateorchestra.org/sites/default/files/ASO%20Violin%20Solo%20Rating%20List.pdf

June 13, 2016 at 11:07 PM · In the same ballpark as Mendelssohn and Lalo.

http://music.indiana.edu/precollege/year-round/strings/repertoire.shtml

It is less difficult than the 1st Wieniawski concerto (f# minor) in the same sense that hitting a baseball off a tee is easier than hitting a pitched ball, in my opinion.

June 14, 2016 at 05:55 AM · Greetings,

the anologies get a but high tech for me sometimes. If that means substantially, then yes, it is a heck of a lot easier. But yes, in the same ball park as the romantic concertos mentioned. The master class with Rachel Barton Pine teaching it to a student is quite interesting although the students performance is probably best placed under a tree rootbsomewhere in the black forest. Enesco, a musician of the highest calibre, rated this concerto very highly from a musical perspective so it is not one to be dismissed although it probably has become a bot too overworked by stduents who dont recognize its value. The Heifetz recording is outstanding. The recording of the f sharp concerto by Michael Rabin is an absoulte masterpiece.

Cheers,

Buri

June 14, 2016 at 12:16 PM · I remember hearing the opening theme of the first movement and being entranced. I definitely feel like I should've known about this piece sooner.

June 14, 2016 at 01:25 PM · For Buri and anyone else who may have missed out on the joys of tee ball:

Wieniawski #2: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jUDsOkGwPHk

Wieniawski #1: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ngubly4hpHw

June 14, 2016 at 02:47 PM · The recording by Mr. Rabin of Wieniawski's 2 is also excellent, though the old Heifetz one is iconic.

I think the 2nd is worthy of the Concert Hall, as most likely it was back in the day. Too many beautiful works have been "lost" to the so-called "student concerto" moniker. Guess Heifetz loved to play a lot of student pieces (and no, I disagree it's because the concert scene has "matured", as the ubiquitous popular works commonly performed nowadays tend to be date from about y he same era. There has been no "musical evolution" to justify the neglect of many good works, IMO.)

June 14, 2016 at 02:56 PM · Student concerto? Seitz wrote student concertos.

June 14, 2016 at 05:09 PM · The nice thing about playing stuff written by violinists is that it actually tends to lie pretty well under the hand.

My progression has been Rode 7, De Beriot 9, Viotti 22, Vieuxtemps 2, Kreisler Praeludium & Allegro, and now I've started working on Wieniawski 2. None of these have been particularly easy, but you can get a lot out of them with smart practice, working things out slowly, paying very close attention to intonation, and memorizing early.

There are some interesting technical challenges in the Wieniawski, like fingered octaves, long upbow staccati, chromatic glissandi and some other stuff, but most of the technique needed is built on technique that you are building in previous pieces and etude work like Kreutzer and such.

June 14, 2016 at 08:20 PM · My opinion is that the best violin concertos were written by pianists, not by violinists.

Here's your all-star lineup:

Rode vs Mozart

De Beriot vs Beethoven

Viotti vs Prokofiev

Vieuxtemps vs Brahms

Paganini vs Tchaikovsky

Kreisler vs Saint-Saens

Sarasate vs Mendelssohn

Accolay vs Korngold

Rieding vs Bruch

Seitz vs Barber

The V-team isn't devoid of talent, but I don't think the overall match-up is even close.

Violinists who wrote concertos that are actually good include Bach and Sibelius. But they were pianists as well. Dvorak was primarily an organist but also played the viola reasonably.

I think one reason why concertos written by violinists do not have the same musical authority as those written by others is precisely because the great violinists understood the technical demands of their instruments so keenly that they were as much interested in exploring the richness of violinistic technique for its own sake as they were in plumbing the depths of musical expression.

A lot of concertos get beat up by students who are using them to advance their technique, but I think this is especially true of those written by violinists for the same reasons.

June 14, 2016 at 09:28 PM · I actually think that many of these violinist composer's concerti are actually good. Whether they are "Beethoven-good" or not should not determine their fate at the Concert Hall.

I respect Ms. Hahn for "forcing" modern audiences to expand their prescribed "good music" repertoire. Vieuxtemps 4th, Spohr 8th, etc. Surely she reveres Brahms Vln Cto's place in the repertoire, but at the same time plays in public, not just recordings, other (now mostly neglected) jewels of violin literature.

(Interestingly, this seems to represent a big influence from her previous teachers, besides coming from personal preference. We should never downplay these supposedly "lesser" pieces as mere stepping stones, or worse, "student works"! It's all worthy music! Learning the Lalo SE as a student doesn't make it a student piece-same for Mendelssohn, Sibelius, or even Viotti 22nd, for that matter!)

Mendelssohn "cheated" with Ferdinand David helping him quite a bit (I LOVE his music, so I am not putting him down.) Ditto for the Brahms-Joachim collaboration. Most-if not ALL-of the pianist composers didn't just compose with zero violin experience, even though their works tend to naturally be less violinistic.

I also feel it's a bit unfair to compare works like that. Music is not just about the "Greatest Hits" (in this case, we all know the great Concerti SHOULD remain staples.) Beautiful/interesting music should be played because it's beautiful/interesting, not only if it passes a non-existent litmus test of "truly good music."

Did not mean to offend, so please feel free to agree to disagree.

June 15, 2016 at 01:26 AM · I enjoy the concertos of Viotti and Spohr too, and I think all of the concertos deserve to be recorded.

I think it would be great for some of these "student concertos" to have good recordings made so that students can make use of them. I worked on Spohr No. 2 for a while, and I could hardly find any recording of it. Perlman made a CD of some student concertos, and I'm glad he did, but I don't think he put much into it.

Let's not forget also that there are two Bach concertos in the Suzuki method books. The first movement of the Double is in books 4-5 and the entirety of the A minor concerto is in book 7. I wouldn't call these pieces "student concertos" at all. They are great pieces. Baroque concertos were written on smaller canvases than classical or romantic concertos, that's just a fact of history. There is no comparison, in my mind, between Bach A Minor and Seitz D Major, in terms of musical content.

June 15, 2016 at 02:27 AM · I agree Bach is Bach. I am a bit miffed that most baroque music performances have been quasi-"stolen" by the good HIP movement. I think both type of performances should have their place (to each their own kind of thing.) No Bach Cto is a "student piece"... in fact, Vivaldi "Op. 3 No. 6" isn't a student work either.

Thankfully Mr. Hoelscher recorded all the Spohr Concerti, but I am glad Heifetz and Hahn, among others, recorded at least No. 8 as well. These were challenging for their era, but regardless, he was a fine composer (hated Paganini, of course.)

The Viotti deserve another re-visit. Franco Mezzena's collection was nice but the audio engineer butchered the last mvt., cutting off one whole beat mid-piece! That was kind of amateurish, and no fault of the musicians, but kills the set for me, as it's the one concerto they shouldn't have messed up.

It would be hard to find anyone to help finance these kind of projects, unfortunately, as however good I may think the music can be, it's hard to sell even the popular works, unless a "name" soloist attempts to do this (and even then, I doubt the recordings would sell well.)

What's funny is that the great violinists of the 20th century did record this "not as good" repertoire, from Heifetz to Grumiaux, Oistrakh, and many others. No whole Spohr cycles, of course, but they played some works we'll be lucky to ever hear again at a major Concert Hall. I wish the younger generation dared to re-visit these kind of works more frequently, as they are likely more "needed" than another Bruch/Mendelssohn pair release (however great these are.)

June 15, 2016 at 02:51 AM · It might be hard to finance a full cycle, but the most popular of these concertos could probably go into another equivalent of Perlman's "Concertos from My Childhood" album. Then again, now that people buy iTunes tracks rather than full CDs these days, maybe even that isn't really financially feasible except as a psuedo-vanity project.

June 15, 2016 at 03:36 AM · Greetings,

Im afraid the CD would probably have to be called ' oncertos from my rebellious teenage years.' I'm looking forward to various sequels including 'Concertos from my mid-life crisis,' and 'Concertos from an old people's home.' The final disk would perhaps be 'Concertos from my funeral.'

Cheers,

Buri

Start with the sphor of an idea....

June 15, 2016 at 01:27 PM · For this kind of thing to work nowadays, there needs to be a lot of "value added." I envision something like Barbara Barber's "solos for young violinists" collection, but something that is more rich in content. Each concerto would be a separate volume, so that the student and teacher could order them ala carte. And each would be accompanied by a DVD, not just a CD, of one of the great current violinists playing it, and with orchestra, not piano. The edition would contain the performer's own markings, including fingerings and bowings, that (s)he actually played on the video. The DVD would have "extras" that would include an interview with the master explaining his approach to interpretation, a discussion of the main technical issues with a conservatory teacher, perhaps even a few master classes on the piece with students who have prepared it, and up-close slow-motion shots of the master executing a few of the difficult spots during the main performance.

It's hard to imagine not being willing to pay $50 for all of that. But I agree that it would be hard to imagine ever getting to the kind of sales volume that would make it profitable for a publisher or worth the artist's time. It would have to be a labor of love. And the trouble is that there are a lot of "labors of love" out there for these performers, so among them they do have to choose carefully.