Brahms 'FAE' Scherzo

Brahms ‘FAE’ Scherzo (op. posth.) The famous scherzo from the ‘FAE’ sonata was recorded for the project since the work was included in a concert I gave in Leeds University Concert Series on 3.10.08, with Jonathan Gooing, utilising the newly-returned and restored Erard grand of c.1854. This work, as a joint effort by Albert Dietrich, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms as a gift for Joachim (bearing Joachim’s motto, ‘Frei aber einsam’ – free but lonesome) was not published during Joachim’s lifetime, and the scherzo was premiered in Berlin by Ossip Schnirlin in 1909. At the time of writing I have not been able to view Schnirlin’s edition of the work (assuming that he made one) and instead annotated my modern Henle ‘urtext’ edition with bowings and fingerings that are intended to show some of the expected characteristics of a Joachim performance. The earliest recording of this known to me is one by Australian violinist Daisy Kennedy in 19201. Kennedy, born in 1893, was a pupil of Sévcík and known in England for her associations with Landon Ronald and Henry Wood, as well as Hamilton Harty, who recorded this movement with her. Her playing, however, does not bear any close resemblance to the Joachim manner of performance and by all accounts, is musically as well as technically rather modest. As a consequence, our performance of the work relied upon our accumulated experience and conversance with the Joachim manner of playing, as well as the editorial evidence of Auer and Schnirlin in the violin sonatas discussed elsewhere in the project. This short movement, composed in 1853 (and thus played here with a piano that was an almost exact contemporary of the work itself) is often played in the modern style at a very fast pace, the piu moderato section at bar 99 very much slower, and with the metallic percussiveness inherent in the ubiquitous use of the spiccato bow-stroke on metal strings. We experimented with longer, broader strokes for the opening rhythm, but found that a gently bounced stroke in the middle of the bow seemed to suit the heroic character of the music well (and, as observed elsewhere, there is no reason to assume that Joachim never used this stroke himself, even though he evidently used it very much less often than modern players). We were careful to observe Brahms’ articulated slurs and not to break these up as many modern players do – in this respect we were aided by the use of period instruments, in which the lighter and more transparent piano sonorities (albeit in this case, with an instrument incapable of effective damping, a matter evident in other recordings with it, notably the Mendelssohn op. 49 trio) allowed a more equal partnership and the absence of the problem with performing romantic music on modern instruments, namely the much greater imbalance in power between piano and violin. We tried to ensure that the piu moderato was not taken decisively slower than the opening allegro. Brahms’ enigmatic ‘in tempo’ marking at bar 1 Mat. 76512; Col. L 1337; re-issued in The Recorded Violin Volume 2 (Pearl; BVA II) 136, leading back into the opening material at bar 137-8 (in which Brahms did not mark a return to the opening tempo although, rather in the manner of the reprise in the canzonetta of Mendelssohn’s op. 12 quartet, one must assume that this was intended) was interpreted freely as requiring a very gentle accelerando back to the original tempo, which we achieved principally at bars 138-9 to coincide with the ‘poco a poco crescendo’ marking. We accept that this is perhaps controversial and, on paper, a contravention of Brahms’ ‘in tempo’ marking. Nonetheless it seemed a natural thing to do and a credible practice in the context of what we know of Joachim’s own approach to tempo (and his description of subtle tempo changes, as he remarks in the preface to his edition of the Mendelssohn violin concerto in volume 3 of the Violinschule2). It would be well to note that I played bar 133 as it is laid out in the Henle edition, with the quavers as the notes A-natural and G-natural and not, as some have it, with these quavers a tone higher. 2 J. Joachim & A. Moser, Violinschule Volume 3 (trans. A. Moffat, 1905), 228-9. Joachim alludes to Mendelssohn’s own ‘elastic management of time’ (228) but continues (229) to describe a subtle plasticity of tempo in his own recommendations of how the Mendelssohn violin concerto should be played. One might assume that this manner of execution was held in common with Joachim’s execution of other works. .

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