Pinchas Zukerman x Sinfonia Warsaw

guest event — Sinfonia Varsovia and Pinchas Zukerman with music by Mozart, Bruch and Dvořák.

Pinchas Zukerman, photo: Mirosław Pietruszyński

organizer: Sinfonia Varsovia

“I can't listen to this concert anymore, should I just write this one? Get out of here and play other shows that are just as good, if not better.” These words by Max Bruch testify to the great frustration of the composer, who for twenty years has not been able to write anything that would surpass the fame of his youthful masterpiece. The irritation was compounded by the fact that the First Violin Concerto did not bring him a steady income: as an aspiring composer, he sold it for a priceless, one-time sum of 250 thalers.
Work on the track was painstaking. He began writing it in the summer of 1864. The version made in 1866 under the baton of the composer was not final, he spent the next year looking for support from friends of musicians. Among others, Ferdinand David and Joseph Joachim gave their comments. With the latter he shared numerous doubts: he was afraid of the momentous term “concert” (considering calling the work “fantasy”), he looked for the banal in the violin passages, he noticed formal weaknesses. When, years later, the publication of Bruch's letters was being prepared for publication, the composer asked to omit those that would put him in a bad light. He worried that readers, instead of appreciating his meticulousness as a conscious artist, would see him as an independent composer, dependent on the observations and competence of others.
In the First, he draws on ideas familiar from earlier works of the genre: all three parts are played attaca (without pauses) as in Mendelssohn, and in the opening snare of the cauldrons he makes a clear nod to Beethoven. Today there is no doubt that the First is a masterpiece—and that is Bruch's masterpiece. Unusually, in the first two parts it omits or significantly shortens the final customary paragraphs of the form, the essence of which is to repeat the initial material. This is probably done to avoid the charge of predictability. For the first part, he uses the term Vorspiel, considering it only an introduction to the Adagio. The finale, with its impetuous two-tones, is full of Hungarian character, well known to us from Brahms's concert a decade later.
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The other two works of the evening were written by Mozart and Dvořák without similar dilemmas. You can hear in them the lightness and disvolvement of these creators. Mozart usually left overtures for himself at the end of his work on the opera, as was the case with the last of them, the Magic Flute. This allowed him to use the already composed musical material of the drama in his opening overture. The initial chords of the plate refer directly to the events of the second act: these sounds accompany the initiation ceremony (of a distinctly Masonic character), to which Tamino is subjected. Mozart here brilliantly mixes humor with seriousness. Unusually for a comic opera, the overture's main theme is processed on the principle of fugue, a form with decidedly dignified connotations of antiquity and scholarship. He drew a witty melody from the first part of Muzio Clementi's Piano Sonata in B major Op. 24 No. 2 — it is possible that the idea of composing a fugue based on this theme came to Mozart during the performance of an improvised cadence ad libitum at the end of Allegre's sonata.
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It took Dvořák less than 10 weeks to write Symphony No. 8 during a creative break in his summer residence in Vysoké. The respected critic Eduard Hanslick reviewed one of her first performances in a very positive light. He argued that Dvořák showed real maturity in this piece, because — to paraphrase — “he did not contaminate spontaneity and freshness with pedantry.” In the Symphony, you can definitely feel the atmosphere of the Czech countryside: the work shimmers with the variability of moods, lively melodies with a distinctly folk color.
Following the late Schubert pattern, themes develop as elaborate processing of motifs rather than closed, symmetrical thoughts that are easy to distinguish. The stately chant in the first part leads through the flute signal towards a real explosion of energy. In the pastoral Adagio, Dvořák imitates the sounds of nature (birdsong). In Allegretto grazioso, a sentimental waltz in a minor key sounds with strings jumping fluidly on staccato strings, which evoke Mendelssohn's Elfenmusik (“gnome music”). The composer juxtaposes this waltz with an expressive major trio, sounding limping trumpets and cauldrons. Announced with trumpets, the finale is an elegant mix of roundabout forms and variations with spirited, dance themes.

Jakub Struzinski