Everything music from a perspective of a public
school music teacher with subject integration
(especially art, history, and literature) as a focus
to help teach the Common Core Curriculum.
Villa Joachim in Berlin Joseph Joachim’s villa, built in 1871-72 to designs by Richard Lucæ, was in Tiergarten, with a main façade standing back from the street and fronting the corner of Beethovenstrasse and In den Zelten
(Joachim had organized a gala evening
in Dvorak's honor.) While there, Dvorak
took the opportunity to consult Joachim
about his violin concerto in progress (just
as Brahms had done in the past; Brahms
was principally a pianist) for which the
first version (dated on the score:
July 5-13) would be completed
later that summer.
Giancarlo Vitali, 1929
The initial sketch of the original version
essentially treated the same themes as
in the final version, but its formal arrange-
ment differed considerably. Joachim recom-
mended certain changes which Dvorak work-
ed into the emerging score during August and
September and, in November, he sent the
concerto to Joachim with an an accompanying
letter expressing the wish that Joachim state
his "avowed opinion" on the concerto. Joachim
apologized for the fact that he was temporarily
engaged, but he promised Dvorak that he
would take a look at the work "con amore" as
soon as possible. (In January 1880 Dvorak
reported that Joachim had promised to play
the concerto as soon as it was published.)
Dvorak awaited his comments and was able to
hear the verdict from him in person when he
visited Joachim in Berlin in late March
and early April 1880.
It is well known that never hesitated to "correct"
two years for a reply. In August 1882 Joachim finally responded. Dvorak received a letter from the violinist in which he explained in de- tail his standpoint on the current version of the concerto proposing further partial changes (like the need to lighten the density of the orchestral setting) and he made numerous emendations to the solo part to ensure greater facility of per- formance. To this he stated: "Some passages...were too difficult to perform."
proach to musical form, especially with respect to
Dvorak's bold experimentation in the first move-
ment, made him uncomfortable) since, other than
his play-through in Berlin, Joachim does not seem
to have ever performed the concerto in public
(though he almost did so in London in 1884).
Never-the-less, his name remained at the head of
the score as its dedicatee. Instead the premiere, as
stated previously, given on October 14, 1883 in
Prague, was performed by Dvorak's friend, the
twenty-three-year-old, Prague-born violinist,
František Ondříček.
George Bellows: The Violinist Leila Kalman
ANALYSIS
The Violin Concerto, while still holding onto
the traditional Germanic classical concerto
form for its basic structure or outline (three
movements of which the two outer movements
are written in a faster tempo, and the middle
one is slow and lyrical: fast-slow-fast) has dis-
tinct harmonic characteristics and is infused
with traditional Czech melodies with the con-
certo's effectiveness depending on the immed-
iate appeal of the thematic material.
Dvorak stepped slightly outside the traditional mould in this concerto like, as previously stated, his idea of linking the first and second move- ments together without interruption. He dispensed with any long orchestral introduction [as Mendelssohn's
which broke with classical formal tradition by delaying the opening orchestral tutti and having the soloist take center stage at the onset of the work, and as Bruch had done with his violin
concerto as well] and abbreviated the first-move- ment reprise (and also the somewhat ambiguous
expression of sonata form in the first move-
ment). The piece also does not contain the
traditional virtuoso solo cadenza.
Carl Schweninger Jr: Das Konzert
VIOLIN CONCERTO IN A MINOR, OP. 53 (MOVEMENT I) Josef Suk, Violin
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