When Eyjafjallajokull expectorated her fine dust into the clear skies of Europe, I found myself stranded in Amsterdam with no violin, having been whisked off for a break by my beloved. For the first time in my life, I had gone away fully intending not to practice. It was only for a couple of days! It should have been fine! Murphy’s law, eh? So I found a wonderful music shop where they were amazingly kind, and sorted me out with a violin and bow to practice on until I could get home. I must admit it wasn’t so bad, being stuck in Amsterdam in great company. It really could have been a lot worse.

I was very lucky to get hold of a violin, because next Tuesday I’m playing the Beethoven concerto in Bulgaria!

The Beethoven is my absolute favourite violin concerto of all time. As part of my daily practice routine, I played this concerto every day for years and years, and it is still my favourite thing to play as a warm-up before a concert, when I have that luxury. To me, it has a sort of mystical quality – the harmonic changes are just so perfect, the orchestration so balanced, and yet it is so much more than a beautiful, well-constructed concerto! It has a very functional quality, which I love. It is elegant and beautiful, without frippery.

To my ear, it is completely perfect, and stands a touch taller than any concerto written before or after. I “see” strong architectural lines in its composition, and there is not a single superfluous phrase, gesture or note in the entire work. Although it is unquestionably part of the core violin repertoire, it’s not everyone’s favourite, and many violinists loathe the technical difficulties – even though the solo lines sound clear and simple, the work is absolutely full of octaves and other technical challenges which expose even the slightest left-hand instability. While not the least forgiving of all the violin concertos (I would place the Mozarts firmly in that camp), it certainly sorts the men from the boys.

By a very conservative estimate, I have spent at least 4000 hours, maybe a good bit more, with this piece of music since the age of sixteen, when I began to incorporate it into my practice routine. It was the first complete concerto I was invited to play as soloist with an orchestra at fourteen, so I’ve been playing it for half of my life now. Even then, I would listen to it with the full score, and pretend to conduct, so I would know all the cues. And still, every time I study it, perform it or use it to warm up or gauge my left-hand condition, it warms my heart, surprises me, cheers me up, and pretty much reminds me why I play the violin in the first place.

My friend and colleague Malcolm Yuen, whom I worked with on last year’s DPO tour of the US, will be wielding the baton. Although he was associate conductor on that tour, this will be our first performance together, so that should be interesting! Since we are currently in different countries, we had a preliminary rehearsal via Skype, which seemed to work surprisingly well. When we discussed doing this concert and started talking about musical things, we agreed that it would be nice if I played along with the first violins in the opening tutti ¹. This is something that not everyone does nowadays, but it was common practice back in the day². After memorising the opening tutti part, I decided to “rehearse” it by playing along with a recording, since that bit is new to my hand, if not my ear³. Too lazy to go to the shelf and open a CD box, I turned to YouTube, which we all know is a mistake. Not only did I read some comments which made me think very hard, which is not easy after doing a lot of practice, but I ended up having a total YouTube binge, the fruits of which I post below.

Jordgubbsmix Sorry…I’m trying but I don’t relly get classical music xD It’s beautiful though I can hear that.
TheSecondhour @Jordgubbsmix why dont you like it? is it to complicated for you to understand?? i know a lot of people that dont like it for that reason
Jordgubbsmix @TheSecondhour I don’t know…it’s…boring? Haha maybe you’re right though
TheSecondhour @Jordgubbsmix hahahahaha boring?? yeah i can see how some people would find it boring, classical isn’t for everyone.vor 4 Wochen

I have something to say about this, but it’ll have to wait ’til the next blog!

In the meantime, how about some boring YouTube videos of boring classical music that are all the same and all really boring? I’ve just been listening from the beginning to the opening passage in every video and it’s fascinating how all these different, I mean, boring, musical personalities come across.

Here’s Nigel Kennedy directing from the violin, whose performance of the Beethoven with the ICO a few years ago completely blew me away – it was sublime (and completely different from his previous interpretation, by the way, in case you weren’t a fan of that one). He only starts around 1:20 and it’s incomplete, enjoy : )

Joshua Bell (this is where I found the comments I quoted above), who is also directing from the violin. Notice that Josh doesn’t play in the opening tutti, while Nigel does.

A young Anne Sophie Mutter. Notice how she uses a very exaggerated vibrato:

Jascha Heifetz, a titan, one of the most respected violinists of the 20th century, the man who raised the bar for everyone – he was also notorious for playing everything faster than everyone else. His tempo is slightly slower than Nige’s! just audio:

Itzhak Perlman with Barenboim and the Berlin Phil – the musical equivalent of a Fendi bag, if you like that sort of thing. The opening winds use a lot of vibrato. Notice how when Perlman comes in with the solo line around 3:10, he has a completely different tempo to the orchestra!

David Oistrakh, my hero. He made better recordings of the piece, still, though, very much worth a listen, and the LSO are sublimely smooth under Sir Adrian Boult’s ABSOLUTELY GIGANTIC BATON.

I’d better stop before I carry on with this all night, and post every. single. video. of this piece. Buona Notte!

¹ “tutti” is Italian for “everyone”, and in a concerto it refers to the bits where the orchestra plays without the soloist.
² http://www.jstor.org/pss/3137973
³ normally I wouldn’t do that with classical music. I avoid listening to recordings of pieces I’m currently playing like the plague, because I have a horror of being influenced by someone else’s interpretation and unwittingly copying things.