Mendelssohn Violin Concerto op. 64 2nd movement
This movement was performed in order to display the differences between two important editions of the work, by Joseph Joachim and Ferdinand David. I thought it would be useful to record the work utilising both editions, to which I have referred in numerous talks on performing practice and demonstrated on the violin to show the characteristics of these editions. The work in these editions is referred to by Clive Brown in Classical and Romantic Performing Practice 1750-1900 (Oxford, 1999) and my Theory and Practice in Late Nineteenth Century Violin Performance (Aldershot, 2003)[1].
Both performances (made as in the case of the other project work with a selective approach to vibrato, rhythmic freedom embodying tempo rubato and a readiness to practice portamenti) show that David’s edition is rather more liable to ‘simple’ but aurally obvious applications of the portamento, especially in terms of ‘chains’ of consecutive portamenti on the same finger, and slides with 4th fingers; Joachim’s edition is a little more sparing in this respect and the mechanism of the fingerings a little more complex. Whilst many fingerings are in common between the two editions (as in the consecutive chain of first fingers in bar 37), attention might be drawn, for example, to bars 13 and 14. David has the same fingering for both bars, with a 4th finger slide; Joachim makes a contrast between these two bars, indicating that the first one remains simply in 3rd position, whilst the second remains on the D string – here though, Joachim executes a more complex fingering at the start of the bar than David’s sliding on of the fourth finger. Such differences within a scheme that is, in many respects, similar is as much the result of individual artistic difference as it is a change of style; it shows that Joachim’s fingerings are in general a little more complex than David’s and that Joachim based his fingerings a little more consciously on theoretical principles, carefully grading and varying his fingering scheme in order to avoid repetition. This can be observed in his recordings (and the variety of treatments of the main themes in his C major Romance) and indeed those of others such as Leopold Auer, who creates a similar (and exquisite) variation in the performance of Tchaikovsky’s Melodie op. 42 no. 3 (which was examined at some length in my text, Theory and Practice).[2]
An interesting and relevant recording of this movement, albeit in truncated form (omitting the middle A minor section) was made by Arnold Rosé in 1910, although in many ways it serves not to inform a ‘David-Joachim tradition’ of the work’s performance, but to show that Rosé, often rather crudely compared to the Joachim tradition on record, was in reality quite distinct from it[3] (although less distinct than many others from this time, it must be admitted). Joachim, who uses a regular if discreet vibrato, executes a number of portamenti, some of which are of interest. In bars 13 and 14, Rosé varies the portamenti (see annotated edition). At bar 11, he executes a portamento from an open string to a fingered note. Such purely ornamental portamenti were generally frowned upon by the classical German school, which held that portamenti should arise naturally from the musical material rather than be ‘engineered’ as stylistic mannerisms. However, there is an interesting comparison between this portamento and one mentioned in Charles de Bériot’s Méthode de violin (Paris, 1858)[4]:
Ex 1
Here, Bériot indicates portamenti from open strings, which necessitates a slide either of the second note (an ‘L’ portamento) or from the first note, thus:
Ex 2
Either of these results in an ‘unessential’ portamento, since the shift can be made noiselessly given the open string. Rose practices several slides as in the second of these options. There is no evidence of these shifts in performances by Joachim, Auer, Soldat or Klingler, or others closely related to the German ‘classical’ tradition.
As I demonstrated at the RMA Annual Conference at Royal Holloway in September 2007 (in which I discussed this at some length), Rosé’s device is remarkably similar. This shows perhaps Rosé’s stylistic basis in the nineteenth century but not necessarily the Joachim tradition specifically.
[1] C. Brown, Classical and Romantic Performing Practice 1750-1900 (Oxford, 1999), 578, 584; D. Milsom, Theory and Practice in Late Nineteenth Century Violin Performance 1850-1900 (Aldershot, 2003), especially as regards portamento – 86, 90-2, 98.
[2] Milsom, 100,104.
[3] Much of this may originate from both the remarks of Carl Flesch in The Memoirs of Carl Flesch (trans. H. Keller, London, 1957) in which he is described (50) as ‘the type of natural, versatile, unintellectual Viennese music-maker. His style was that of the ‘seventies, with no concession to modern tendencies in our art’ and indeed relatively early re-issue of his recordings on CD in which the parity between his playing and that of Joachim was comparatively obvious before the subtleties of style in early recordings were better understood.
[4] C. de Bériot, Méthode de violon (Paris, 1858; trans. Westbrook and Phipson, London, 1876), 237.