Schumann Violin Concerto

[Barbirollians]

I gave my Kremer/Muti/Philharmonia LP a spin for the first time in ages yesterday. It certainly has some lovely moments. The sleeve notes go on about its being ungrateful to play for the violinist - but similar comments were made about the Brahms in the 19th century, and Joachim was happy enough to play that. (Alban Gerhardt told us after a performance of the Schumann cello concerto in Swansea that the solo part there lay uncomfortably for the cellist.) Whatever was going through Clara's and Joachim's minds, Eugenie's opposition in 1937 is harder to figure. I like Tovey's 1937 letter to the Times (quoted in the sleeve note) : "Only a morbid pedantry could decide that this Concerto was inferior to other works published by Schumann in 1853 such as the Fantasie for Violin and Orchestra which Joachim and several good violinists of the present day are quixotic enough to play in public".

There is a real vim about that performance .

[Stanfordian]

I have read about the Schumann Violin Concerto for years, but never actually heard the piece until today. Henryk Szerying recorded it for Mercury in the early 60s and it is included in the first Mercury Big Reissue box, which I am working my way through.
The history behind this piece will probably always trump it's musical value. I'm assuming that most forumites have at least a sketchy knowledge: It was a product of Schumann's last days before his Psychotic breakdown (reportedly he heard angels dictating themes to him);
Brahms and Clara worked hard to suppress it, and succeeded for the better part of 70 years; the Violinist that was to introduce it it, Jelly d'Aryanhi (Joachim's great niece and the inspiration behind Ravel's Tzigane and some Bartok works) claimed to be receiving instructions from the Composer from the Great Beyond; and ultimately the Nazis controlled the first performance, by the distinctly non Nazi Violinist Georg Kulankempf. Someone should write a book about the history of this piece, if it hasn't already been written.
Anyway, after 2 hearings it's a pleasant enough piece, not showing any obvious signs of mental instability. I would rank it of slightly less interest than the Cello Concerto. For me it would occupy the same niche in the Composer's body of works that Dvorak's Piano Concerto occupies for that Composer--worth a listen, but paling in interest compared to Concertos that were written for other instruments by the same Composer(s).
Are there any particular recordings that others would recommend that make the best possible case for the work?

In the Schumann Violin Concerto I admire the recording from soloist Renaud Capuçon with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Daniel Harding on Erato.

[amateur51]

In the Schumann Violin Concerto I admire the recording from soloist Renaud Capuçon with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Daniel Harding on Erato.

That's you & jlw (msg # 11) both then, Stan

[jayne lee wilson]

So I played the BIS Wallin again (24/44.1 BIS Flac) and very grand it sounds in the Dresden Lukaskirche acoustic, with a fiery response from the Robert Schumann Philharmonie. An utterly different conception from Capucon/Harding; the BIS is spacious, slower and weightier, with a more impersonal, considered, almost ruminative response from Wallin in (i). ... But playing a lot of Schumann recently I've come very much to prefer this music played on smaller orchestras - the rhythmic agility and transparency, the quicker response to passing moods and moments... so despite a truly touching account of the adagio from Wallin, so hushed and deeply withdrawn, when I played Capucon/Harding from the slow movement on I found I was much more engaged by its intimacy and intensity - and what a difference the smaller forces make to the woodwinds in the finale - much more playful and colourful.

The Wallin/Beerman reading tries to place the work in the great tradition of the Romantic Concerto with Beethoven and Brahms etc. But with the reduced forces and sharper response of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Harding, the work sounds truer to itself and - I feel - to the spirit of Schumann. I've come to feel the same way about various chamber-orchestral performances of the symphonies too.

...which didn't stop me ordering Baiba Skride, Storgards and the Danish NSO. Hope some of the orchestra got stuck in the traffic...

[gurnemanz]

I enjoyed being sent back to this work by this thread. I have three versions, Bell, Szering and Kulenkampff, all quite recently acquired, "coincidentally" as part of large boxes which I have listened to again.
I like the last two movements more than the first whose worryingly insistent main theme seems to keeps reminding me how desperate and disturbed and possessed the composer was becoming, but there is a more tranquil answering theme. The touching, haunting slow movement "dictated by angels" theme must also have obsessed him since it appears in several other works (Geistervariationen).

I have read that Joachim was only 22 when he rejected the work which might have been a bit presumptuous of him.

[Barbirollians]

The Marwood is one of a only a handful of records in my life I have sent back .

I am surprised that nobody else appears to have the Menuhin as it was the first recording of the version Schumann wrote without tinkerings by others. He was at the height of his powers too and nobody I have heard comes close in the slow movement .

[jayne lee wilson]

Schumann Violin Concerto in D Minor WoO 23; Phantasie in C major OP.131;Violin Concerto in A minor arr. from Cello Concerto op.129
Baiba Skride/Danish National Symphony O./John Storgards (Orfeo CD)

Once in a while there comes a disc... this is really very, very special...
This performance of the Violin Concerto in A minor is as remarkable for the bar-by-bar responsiveness and delicacy of Storgards' accompaniment as for Skride's reading of the solo part itself, which shows a range of tonal colour, an ability to play so quietly yet expressively, to make the music at once completely fresh but seemingly inevitable in its phrasing and trajectory, which is quite out-of-the-ordinary.
Storgards' direction of the orchestra is minutely aware of those tiny variations in the melodic wisps and fragments of Schumann's accompaniment within those seeming repetitions which have been so unjustly criticised. This leads to one of the slowest readings of the 1st movement on disc, but this is only due to the beautifully-judged and deeply expressive rubato.
It probably does the Schumann Violin Concerto no favours to play it as a grandly, quasi-heroic romantic piece, and this nuanced and marvellously exploratory performance shows why. The less direct the better! As Rob Cowan puts it in Gramophone, "these fragile late flowerings will not be hurried".

The Phantasie and the Violinned Cello Concerto are equally revelatory, especially as they too are treated to a recording of translucent, shining beauty and richness in Copenhagen's DR Concert Hall - a truly outstanding sound. (You may find it hard to imagine that Op.129 ever was a Cello Concerto after hearing this...)

It really is time to stop trotting out the cliches about Schumann's late works, his illness, the music's obsessive repetitive quality and so on. His music always did show such compelling features (to wit, the OP.41/3 Quartet Finale, never mind the 1851 4th Symphony). These three highly original concertante works need now to be granted the respect, admiration and love that this album shows they deserve. "Record of the Year" is written all over this one!

[gurnemanz]

Schumann Violin Concerto in D Minor WoO 23; Phantasie in C major OP.131;Violin Concerto in A minor arr. from Cello Concerto op.129
Baiba Skride/Danish National Symphony O./John Storgards (Orfeo CD)

Once in a while there comes a disc... this is really very, very special...

Thanks for the tip. We saw her a few years ago with the Deutsche Kammerphilarmonie in Bremen and definitely thought she was someone to look out for in future. That disc looks very tempting.

[jayne lee wilson]

One last self-Schumann-centred bigup for the wonderful CD I reviewed above... it places every previous recording in a new perspective (Violinists can move goalposts as well as Badgers), so if you care for the rep at all it's time to flash the plastic!