Violin Concerti by Khachaturian and Busoni, and Recordings of Them

Though not especially talented, I played first violin in my high school orchestra, so have some appreciation of what is and what isn't difficult in violin playing. My appreciation for modernist music came more from my piano teacher than from my violin teachers, but I seek out concerts with violin concerti. The most recent one was Soviet Union (Ukraine)-born Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman in the San Francisco Symphony première of the 1940 violin concerto by the Armenian-Soviet Aram Khachaturian (1903-78).

For me, and I suspect many, Khachaturian is a "one-hit wonder," the hit being the "Sabre Dance" from "Gayana," a very propagandistic ballet ("gayana" means happiness). I know of but have never seen nor heard his ballet Spartacus" for which Khachaturian won the 1959 Lenin Prize, and I played some piano pieces of his once upon a time, but was not even aware Khachaturian wrote a violin concerto. (Originally trained as a cellist, he wrote a cello concerto and a cello rhapsody, too.)

The Khachaturian violin concerto apparently traveled extensively in concert halls of World War II allies after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union (the grand alliance also propelled the Shostakovich 7^th Symphony (Leningrad) into western English and American concert halls and radio broadcasts.

The Khachaturian violin concerto is in the traditional fast-slow-fast succession of movements. The fast movements purportedly draw on Armenian folk music, though the very beautiful, lyrical, and very high middle movement has a more "ethnic" sound to me -not that I know anything about specifically Armenian folk music! During the performance, my opera glasses targeted Gluzman's left hand, which was often very close to the violin bridge, which is to say at the upper reaches of violin possibility-certainly above where any violinist comfortably goes.

The official (1950s) Soviet Music view was that the final movement "is a hymn to sunshine and to human happiness" (gayana). I assume that Khachaturian, who had been gored (astonishingly) for "formalism" in the 1948 critiques of Soviet composers (along with Prokofiev and Shostakovich) welcomed the interpretation, but suspect that as with many Shostakovich compositions, the bliss in communism was if not parodistic, at least laced with some irony.

As terrifying as the playing in the violin's stratosphere to an ex-violinist - and presumably to current ones who generally avoid the piece - was the rapid succession of notes the violinist has to deliver in the fast movements. Obviously, the piece was written for display of virtuosity, specifically that of the great Soviet violinist David Oistrakh (1908-74) to whom the piece was dedicated. Oistrakh played the première and recorded the concerto twice, with Khachaturian conducting both times. The sound engineering of the second time is superior to that of the first, though the first recording sounds more savage (and the lyrical slow movement less gorgeous).

Even better sonics are available in a recording by Itzhak Perlman with Zubin Mehta conducting the Israel Philharmonic (paired with the Tchaikovsky Meditation), but in acquiring a recording, I went with the definitive Oistrakh/Khachaturian recording.

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I also find the middle slow movement of violin concerto Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) achingly gorgeous. The Tuscany-born Busoni was a very major figure in the Berlin music scene during the first quarter of the 20^th century as a pianist and as a composition teacher (to, among many others, Kurt Weill, Edgard Varèse, and Dimitris Mitropoulos). Busoni's Bach fantasies and transcriptions were once widely played. I don't think the long and daunting piano concerto he wrote for himself (and a male chorus supplementing the orchestra in the ecstatic final movement) in 1904 has ever been much played, and despite occasional interest in his wartime (WWI) operas Arlecchino, Turandot, and Doktor Faust, Busoni has been relegated to "one-hit wonder" status, with the "Berceuse élégaique" (1909) being the survivor in the concert repertory.

Busoni's student, the great Hungarian-American violinist Joseph Szigeti (1892-1973) recorded the Busoni violin concerto (Opus 35a) with Busoni's Sonata for Violin & Piano, No. 2 in E Minor (Opus 36a). Busoni considered the latter the first of his mature compositions. Perhaps he believed the violin concerto (especially the last parts of the first movement) overly influenced by the Brahms violin concerto and Richard Strauss tone poems, but I do not hear the violin sonata as a breakthrough to a distinctive voice. Indeed, I don't recognize a distinctive Busoni voice, though there is nothing else like his mammoth piano concerto form a few years later.

The violin concerto is considerably shorter (25 minutes) than the piano concerto, but still requires considerable stamina, since playing nearly continuously. The end of the second movement pushes quite high and the start of the third is quite virtuosity-demanding (in an elegant way). The slow movement is something of a Bach adaptation: taking the theme from the chorale "Wie wohl ist mir, O Freund der Seele" (How Content Am I, Friend of the Soul") with elaborate variations.

Though Szigeti's recording (with the Little Orchestra conducted by Thomas Scherman in 1954) has particular authority, the sonics are not great. The concerto is oddly split onto two tracks. The piece is supposed to be played without pauses between the movements, and the recording by Jaime Laredo with Daniel Barenboim conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra provides a faster essaying on a single track (with applause at the end). The recording I like best has soloist Siegfried Borries in a lyrical, elegant performance available on a double-disc Sergiu Celibidache with the Berlin Philharmonic (following Debussy's "Jesus" and Hindemith's Piano Concerto on the second disc) with each movement having its own track. The Borries/Celibidache recording dates from 1949, but has been remastered.

The Laredo/Barenboim recording is on a disc including a dark and deep recording of Busoni's "Berceuse élégaique" and a grab-bag other Busoni music. Violinists and violin aficionados need the Szigeti recording, but for the Busoni violin concerto, any of these three recordings is quite good, and if a choice must be made, it is most sensibly driven by what else is on the disc.

A pre-concert lecture by James M. Keller increased my understanding of Khachaturian's place in the Soviet music scene and the ludicrousness of labeling him a "formalist. The brief liner notes to the Szigeti recording "named that tune," the Bach chorale, that is.

The canonical 20^th-century violin concerti are those by Bartók, Berg, Prokofiev (both), Sibelius, and Stravinsky. I think the Barber has recently made its way into this list with Joshua Bell showing that the final movement of it has something to say.

I presume that Gluzman is performing the Khachaturian elsewhere, too.