29410LazicBrahmsBooklet2 14-12-2009 10:45 Pagina 1 CHANNEL CLASSICS CCS SA 29410 Dejan Lazic Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Robert Spano, conductor Brahms / arr. Lazic Piano Concerto no. 3 in D major after Violin Concerto, op. 77 world premiere 29410LazicBrahmsBooklet2 14-12-2009 10:45 Pagina 2 Johannes Brahms / to be amongst the best instrumental arr. Dejan Lazic´ concertos ever written. Naturally, I felt the Piano Concerto No. 3 in D major challenge to arrange the Brahms early on. (after Violin Concerto, op. 77) I was intrigued by the idea of rendering it in an idiomatic version for piano and orchestra. Influences and the Process of The ultimate aim was clear: I wanted to Arrangement: From Historical perform it myself! Backgrounds to Composing of an Perhaps composer and piano virtuoso Muzio Original Cadenza Clementi felt the same way after listening to My source of inspiration was a joint one: the Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Shortly after the piano versions of the Violin Concertos of performance, he asked Beethoven to arrange Bach and Beethoven, which were made by it for piano and orchestra, for he had fallen in the composers themselves. love with this beautiful piece and wanted to play it himself, to present it to London audien- I started working on this project in early ces, and to make it as popular in England as 2003 and completed it in 2008. The violin it was on the Continent at the time. was always a favourite love, and I continue to hold violinists in high esteem, realising It is also interesting to note how Beethoven just how wonderful their literature is. Thus treats the first movement’s original Cadenza far, I have been tremendously lucky to have and how that passage holds major signifi- had many an opportunity to perform with cance for him in the new arrangement: there, some wonderful colleagues. And it is with a he composed an entirely new Cadenza and degree of pride that I present – after Bach scored it for piano and timpani no less. and Beethoven – the third ‘great B’ in the Similarly, in my piano version of the Brahms present arrangement. Violin Concerto, I composed a new Cadenza, for the simple reason that there is no extant Subjectivity plays a role of course, and I Brahms Cadenza. Added to which, Cadenzas have always found this particular concerto, by Joachim, Kreisler or Heifetz remain along with Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto, ‘stubbornly’ suited to the violin, and are not 2 29410LazicBrahmsBooklet2 14-12-2009 10:45 Pagina 3 really pianistic in their conception of the to write a concerto for Joachim, from which music; any arrangement of these would we can infer the term concerto took on a detract too much from their very essence. greater significance than the violin itself. Besides, should not every Cadenza be sort But we are skating on thin ice here, what I of a ‘free area’, one in which every soloist mean to say is that it is quite justified to ought to be able to improvise on material speculate about what would have happened previously heard? if Joachim had been a cellist or a clarinettist, or even… a pianist! The desire to arrange a violin concerto as a piano concerto just because one envisages What emerges from the text most readily is donning the garb of the soloist, is not a a liberal dose of difficulty that is simply not good enough motive to take on this in the nature of the violin: Brahms remained challenge. But I also do not feel there is first and foremost a pianist and thus on the any other romantic violin concerto that outside of the world of a violin virtuoso. would survive the transformation. Maybe this explains why Hans von Bülow At a musicological level, the once described the concerto as being correspondence between Brahms and his ‘against the violin’. Sarasate, for his part, dedicatee Joseph Joachim played a major simply refused to play it, and Vieniawski role for me. After numerous changes, much commented that it was ‘simply unplayable’. good advice, and actual corrections by That is as may be, and we now know this Joachim it remains quite clear that Brahms not to be the case. had always composed as a pianist (at the piano) and therefore felt this music as a But another – possibly more important – pianist, if also as a symphonic composer question pops its head above the parapet: is (originally, Brahms wrote the Violin one actually ‘allowed’ to make such an Concerto in four movements, which was arrangement? typical for a symphony). It is quite obvious With the benefit of hindsight, we know that that the Violin Concerto had its roots in Brahms made countless arrangements and both friendship and practicality: his aim was transcriptions of his and other composers’ 3 29410LazicBrahmsBooklet2 14-12-2009 10:45 Pagina 4 works. I am convinced these were more is about music and not about the than justified; hence, I hope that Brahms institutionalization of music... himself would not have anything against my idea. Let us dwell for a moment on Brahms What lingers is the rhetorical question of and his contemporaries (not least Franz what is a transcription, what makes an Liszt), who made a plethora of trans- arrangement, what may be defined as a criptions, arrangements, variations, and new version. The key to this conundrum is produced much else besides. Nowadays, that I sought to construct anew the violin we seem to fail to cherish this great part, recomposing the voice in a thorough- tradition. Maybe I am behaving here more going Brahmsian style and adding my own as a composer than a performer – the line Cadenza. Throughout the piece that was my that divides production and reproduction is thought: to imagine what Brahms would do. obviously an extremely thin one. Of great import is that the orchestral score remains entirely unchanged! Again, turn your thoughts to Brahms’s beautiful Violin Sonata in G major, and then, With this arrangement – done solely out of if you will, to his own transcription of the respect and admiration for the composer – piece for cello: what emerges is the my main goal was to translate Brahms’s wonderful Cello Sonata in D major, the unique musical language into a new setting composer wisely recasting the work in without losing any of its original musical another key. A new tonality, another value and, in addition, to give pianists an instrument. Altered and modified, the piece equal chance to perform and enjoy this experiences a kind of transmogrification. wonderful music the same way violinists do The musical metamorphosis is complete. for exactly 130 years now. The same goes for both masterly written Clarinet Sonatas which Brahms transcribed Performing Practice: Aesthetics, Tempo, for Viola, or his version of Bach’s famous Rhythm and Rubato Chaconne for violin solo in D minor - for Joachim’s understanding of Brahms’s piano/left hand! At the end of the day, this notation and expectations can be explored 4 29410LazicBrahmsBooklet2 14-12-2009 10:45 Pagina 5 through a range of sources: from his fact that these metronome marks might correspondence with Brahms and the make the concerto ‘too difficult to play’. The famous Joachim-Moser ‘Violinschule’ to his marking eighth note = 72 for the chorale- five recordings from 1903, which allow us like, poetic second movement (originally ‘Un to understand much that would otherwise poco larghetto’, later changed by Brahms to remain unclear. Furthermore, Joachim was ‘Adagio’) is also rather brisk in relation to seen as putting his extraordinary technical conventional interpretations. abilities at the service of ‘high artistic ideal’ and his ‘severity and purity of style, which Joachim’s approach to rhythm was very strives to hide the charms of virtuosity different from that of contemporary rather than accentuate them’ was much violinists, who adhere closely to the written praised by Hanslick. text in this respect. His recordings reveal that his performance of the written rhythms Brahms was notoriously unwilling to specify is very free, but within a more or less tempo by means of metronome and so he regular pulse. His use of un-notated rubato, provided no guidance for the Violin in the sense of absolute increase or Concerto beyond the Italian tempo terms. decrease of tempo, is generally restrained Joachim’s metronome marks of 1905 are and subtle. probably a reliable guide to the tempo at which he himself performed the concerto. How essential any of these factors may be They are, in some respects, surprising; to a stylistically convincing performance of quarter note = 126 for the rich, symphonic this concerto remains debatable. But, as and rather rhapsodic first movement and Clive Brown states correctly: ‘Brahms quarter note = 104 for the Hungarian- himself was remarkably flexible about how inspired Rondo are very much faster then his music should be performed, accepting the tempo taken by modern violinists. that there was no single valid approach, Bernard D. Sherman has observed that they though he was perfectly capable of walking are ‘far faster than any recording known to out of a performance that displeased him...’ me’. Joachim himself was well aware of the 5 29410LazicBrahmsBooklet2 14-12-2009 10:45 Pagina 6 Johannes Brahms publication she wrote to Brahms on May 3, 2 Rhapsodies, op. 79 1880: ‘The title ‘Rhapsodies’ is probably & Scherzo, op. 4 the most suitable after all, even though the concise form of the pieces appears almost Brahms composed the 2 Rhapsodies, op. to contradict the meaning of the word 79 in summer 1879 - in the same year his ‘rhapsodic’.’ Violin Concerto op.