Concert Description by Warwick Lister

Ferdinand David, a distinguished German violinist who lived more than 100 years after Vivaldi, was a friend and colleague of Mendelssohn, and he arranged a number of compositions from the Baroque period to bring them up to date, as it were. In several ways, David’s arrangement of this work bears only a distant relationship with Vivaldi’s original. For one thing, in Vivaldi’s time, the piano part would have been played on a harpsichord. For another, as was customary in Vivaldi’s time, the keyboard part in the early editions consists only of a bass line, along with a few figures indicating the harmonies—the so-called figured bass. The keyboardist was expected to fill in the harmonies, often at sight. David (as well as many others before and since) filled in the harmonies in his edition in the mid-nineteenth century style—a procedure nowadays frowned upon in the wake of the “authenticity” movement in music performance of the last thirty or forty years. Our consciences as performers and listeners may perhaps be salvaged if we think of this work as a “hybrid period piece”—at any rate irresistibly charming.

The Adagio is for all the world a dramatic operatic recitative—we are apt to forget that Vivaldi was a prolific opera composer.

Schumann’s Three Romances, Op. 94 were originally composed for oboe, but violinists tend to think that they sound quite well on the violin. Those who are familiar with the composer’s sonatas for violin and piano will recognize Schumann here at his most elusive, yet simple and heart-felt—Einfach, innig.

Viotti, Andante con grazia ed espressione, from Divertissement No. 1, WVa: 7. In 1819 Viotti published a set of three divertimenti for cello with piano accompaniment dedicated to the great cellist Jean-Louis Duport, as well as arrangements thereof for violin and piano. Duport, one of Viotti’s oldest and closest friends, died in the same year, and it may well be that Viotti, aware of his friend’s impending death, intended these lovely pieces as an affectionate homage.            

The Romance by Elgar is the middle movement of his only sonata for violin and piano, composed in 1918. This piece is in three sections, having an ABA form. The first section is in Elgar’s most whimsical vein, full of fits and starts, hesitations, lingering, and just a whiff, perhaps, of Spanish rhythms, but always tender, always nostalgic. The second section rises to a passionate climax, then subsides poignantly, whereupon the whimsical music of the first section returns. There is one last, characteristic Elgarian touch: at the very end of the piece, the final quiet chord in the piano dies away, leaving the violin holding a long, sustained, lonely note. 

Mozart’s early works for keyboard and violin were sonatas for harpsichord with an optional part for the violin. By the time of the present sonata, however (composed in 1778), the violin has become indispensable, though a trace of the pre-eminence of the piano remains in the first variation, which is for piano alone. That in itself should be enough to cure those who commit the horrid solecism of referring to the pianist in these works as the “accompanist.”