(program)
Vox Productions Recording // Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) // Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35
USSR Orchestra, Conducted by Gauk & Kondraschin. Solo violin: David Oistrach
Allegro moderato
Canzonetta, Andante
Finale, Allegro vivacissimo
On some distant moon I lie on my back
For a glimpse of blue 'fore it's gone to black
It used to be like this, now it's not like that
I've got your light
I've got your light in my eyes.
“” josh ritter, Lights
few combinations in classical music feel as intuitive as tchaikovsky and the month of december. as a generality: handel’s probably paying your rent for december if you’re in an orchestra, and likewise, if you’re a ballet dancer, tchaikovsky has you covered. it is something remarkable that the music of a composer, who’s been dead for a century and a quarter, is nevertheless in the background of every other commercial this time of year——(owing much, admittedly, to the combined machinery of christmas and black-friday-capitalism)——the notorious P.I.T. seems to still have the month on lock.
A daunting virtuoso work it may be, but it starts innocently with what could be another ‘Rococo Theme’. Within a few bars, a drum roll and fragments of a livelier theme build swiftly to a climax on full orchestra, which falls away in a succession of little pairs of notes. This is all the introduction there is - Tchaikovsky dispenses with the conventional orchestral exposition of themes as thoroughly as Bruch in his First Violin Concerto. “” robert philip on the first movement, The Classical Music Lover’s Companion to Orchestral Music
this week is proof that the concerto format—and this one in particular—is the best accompaniment to studying for exam: the relatively few selection of musical ideas that are dissected and reassembled, combined with the wedge-shaped concentration that the entire work directs towards the star instrument——conducive to the nearly forty hours of studying that i threw at a calculus exam this week.
The soloist enters with a graceful little cadenza, and, taking up the earlier phrases in the orchestra, elaborates them into the first theme. This begins lyrically, and then subtly changes in character. Tchaikovsky enlivens the lyricism with piquant dotted rhythms, the theme is repeated with bold chords, and them the dotted rhythms lead on to a new element. Flowing triplets and dotted rhythms alternate at first, then the triplets gain momentum amid a virtuoso flourish. The music builds to a climax, with the dashing of the soloist punctuated by the dotted rhythms in the orchestra. “” robert philip on the first movement, The Classical Music Lover’s Companion to Orchestral Music
this violin concerto isn’t exactly what i expected from tchaikovsky, at least as far as his status as the most lyrical of Romantic composers: it’s moreso Modern than Romantic, modern in the details and Romantic in themes. the main theme of the first movement, especially, is a melody that sticks up like a summit, only to be repeatedly subsumed by the landscape of details described by the staccato figurations of the solo instrument (in that very long cadenza, for example), and then rises again in a later instance with slight variations.
This falls away to a second main theme. Its lyrical character is similar to that of the first theme, but its development is different. Instead of introducing dotted figures, Tchaikovsky simply builds the intensity of the lyricism up to a high point, then dropping low on the sonorous G string of the violin. Again the melody builds, up and up, until it breaks into rushing scales. This sets off an extended passage of pyrotechnics, and this too builds in excitement. It ends with a series of trills, and the orchestra bursts in to bring the first section of the movement to a close. “” robert philip on the first movement, The Classical Music Lover’s Companion to Orchestral Music
the studious length of the cadenza and its spastic and turbulent gestures, the prominence of the soloist——less a dialogue with the orchestra and more of a one-sided call-and-reponse——are, aside from the very whistleable theme, the most prominent features of the concerto.
(song of the week: Lights - josh ritter)
ritter is on my imaginary excel-list of people who must be protected at all cost. his is a musicianship unique in ways that are more subtle than obvious, in that in his songs neither allow the lyrics nor melody take full sway; he’s as much a poet as he’s a melodist. his 2013 album, The Beast In Its Tracks, is the case and point. i’ve been unravelling it at the slow pace of about a song a year; beginning in 2016 with Hopeful, about the most honest four minutes of music i know; then Bonfire in 2018, which ironically is the most hopeful song of the bunch (‘I’ll be over here with my bonfire for you’). if wonderment is the metric by which we judge a ‘good song’ then i think Lights might end up being my favourite on the album, whenever it is i finish listening to it. it’s in need of a good music video. presently i make due by watching the video for Lost in the Light by Bahamas on mute, while listening to this song. which sorta kinda works if you start the former ten seconds late——both songs seem to swim in the slow radiance of a light nearly liquid.