Joseph Joachim
(1831-1907)
Violin Concerto No.3
in G major • Overture 'Hamlet', Op. 4
Overture 'In Memoriam
Heinrich von Kleist', Op. 13
The violinist Joseph Joachim has a secure place in the history of violin
playing and in the wider history of music, as a result of his close association
with Brahms and his clear influence on the latter's writing for the violin and
on his techniques of orchestration.
Joachim was born in 1831 in Kittsee (now Köpscény) near Pressburg, the
old Hungarian Coronation town (the modern Bratislava), the seventh of eight
children born to Jewish parents Julius and Fanny Joachim. With the
encouragement of his parents, he started to learn the violin at the age of
five, studying with Serwaeczyéski in Pest, to where the family had moved in
1835. In 1839 Joseph played in public, with his teacher, the double concerto by
the Mannheim violinist Eck, and in the same year was sent to Vienna to study
with Miska Hauser. He later studied with Hauser's own teacher, Georg
Hellmesberger, a leading figure in the Viennese school of violin playing in the
nineteenth century. It was, however, from Joseph Böhm, a man who played for
Beethoven and Schubert, that he was to learn the foundations of his technique
and repertoire. A move to Leipzig, where Mendelssohn directed the Gewandhaus
Orchestra, enabled him to study with Ferdinand David from 1843 and also to
benefit from the opportunity to work with Mendelssohn. In August 1843 Joachim
played at a Gewandhaus concert in the distinguished company of Pauline Viardot
(Turgenev's innamorata), Clara Schumann and Mendelssohn, performing a work by
Bériot. In the same year he played Ernst's Othello-Phantasie at another
concert in the Leipzig series, and in 1844 made his first visit to England, a
country with which he established a connection that was to last until the end
of his life.
Joachim's career took him in 1849 to Weimar, as leader of the Grand
Duke's orchestra. The position resulted in a close involvement with Liszt, who
was established in the Duchy as Director of Music Extraordinary. Three years
later Joachim accepted the position of violinist to King George V of Hanover,
and it was there, in 1853, that the violinist Reményi, a school friend of
Joachim, introduced him to the young Brahms. It was to be through this
introduction that Joachim was able to arrange for Brahms to be received by
Liszt at Weimar, and late, by Schumann in Düsseldorf. His own friendship with
Brahms was only later marred by disagreement, when Brahms sided with Joachim's
estranged wife, the soprano Amalie Weiss, in divorce proceedings instigated by
Joachim.
Joachim's association with Brahms and his sympathy with the classicism
of Mendelssohn and Schumann led to the famous breach with Liszt and the
so-called neo-German school, with its broader and less purely musical
ambitions. As a player, indeed, he was the antithesis of the virtuoso Liszt,
his performance studiously avoiding any suggestion of technical brilliance for
its own sake. The Viennese critic Hanslick, writing of Joachim's first adult
appearance in Vienna in 1861, praised his modest unadorned greatness, while
suggesting that the playing of others might appeal more to the heart than
Joachim's unbending, Roman earnestness.
In 1868 Joachim moved to Berlin as head of the Hochschule für Ausübende
Tonkunst and it was there that he remained for the next 39 years, active in the
duties of his position while also continuing his career as a player. In
particular, he was leader of the Joachim Quartet, a new ensemble of great
distinction which was renowned for its performances of the later Beethoven
quartets and which demonstrated a natural affinity with the chamber music of
Brahms.
As a composer Joachim wrote primarily for the violin; the second of his
three concertos, the so-called Hungarian Concerto, was for a long time
part of the standard violin repertoire. His first violin concerto, in G minor,
was written during his time in Hanover and was performed in Leipzig in 1855.
The Violin Concerto No. 3, in G major, expresses clearly enough the classical
seriousness of Joachim. It was written in mourning for the death of Frau Gisela
Grimm, the daughter of Bettina von Arnim, the sister of Clemens Brentano. It
was performed in England in a Crystal Palace concert in 1875, and in Berlin in
1889. The concerto received its American première in 1891.
The first movement of the concerto makes use of a song by Bettina von
Arnim as its principal subject. The solo violin enters, after the briefest of
orchestral introductions, to repeat the theme with its own elaborations of
increasing technical complexity. The whole movement, while conceived in the
spirit of Schumann, has distinct traces of the kind of idiom that would have
proved popular with English audiences. The second movement, an Andante, was
conceived as an elegy for Frau Grimm, solemnly announced, with a figure that
may remind us of Mozart's herald of death in Don Giovanni. The music
that unfolds is imbued again with the kind of noble serenity which was suitable
both to the subject and to the temperament of the composer. The Finale possesses
the energy and mood of its marking, Allegro giocoso energico, perhaps
reminding us, at certain moments, of Joachim as a pioneer of Beethoven
performance in the nineteenth century, with his playing of the violin concerto
at the age of thirteen in Leipzig. The echoes are only momentary, since the
movement is conceived in a spirit which derives rather from Spohr. Whose
concertos Joachim had studied with Ferdinand David. It forms a conclusion of
fitting brilliance and technical difficulty to a concerto that makes strenuous
demands on the violinist.
Joachim always showed a considerable interest in matters of general
cultural importance, and was never limited in this respect as some of those who
show early talent as instrumentalists may be. Brahms had been deprived, by his
background, of the kind of opportunities that Joachim enjoyed, but during their
early friendship they were able to share something of Joachim's wider literary
preoccupations. Something of this is demonstrated in the early overtures
written by Joachim to Hamlet, Demetrius and Henry IV, the latter
two arranged for piano duet by Brahms. Joachim wrote his concert overture Hamlet,
Op. 4 in 1853, the year in which he introduced the young Brahms to Schumann
in Düsseldorf. Schumann praised the poetic conception of the work, with its
deep-sounding French horns. The Elegiac Overture, Op. 13 'In Memoriam
Heinrich von Kleist' was composed during the later part of Joachim's
career, after he had established himself in Berlin. Undated, it seems to have
been written around the time of the Kleist centenary in 1877, followed as it is
by the Scenes from Schiller's Demetrius, which were written for
his wife: in 1878. The music of the Overture speaks for itself, in
clear, classical terms. The man it commemorates, Heinrich von Kleist, had
committed suicide in 1811 at the age of 34, leaving a legacy that was to prove
of the greatest importance in the development of the Romantic movement in
Germany. His work has served as a source of musical inspiration, particularly
the patriotic Hermannsschlacht, Penthesilea, and the Novelle Michael
Kohlhaas.
Keith Anderson