Britten & Hindemith: Violin Concertos - Arabella Steinbacher, Vladimir Jurowski, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
Breathtaking virtuosity flows seamlessly with expansive lyrical passages and fiendish passagework in this commanding performance by Arabella Steinbacher of the restless and technically demanding violin concertos of Britten and Hindemith, with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.
Read more…The composition of instrumental concertos was a recurring theme throughout the life of the composer, who had studied the violin but was also a virtuoso performer on a number of instruments. Throughout his various compositional stages he wrote no less than 21 multifaceted, highly individualized concertos. These include his “Chamber Music” works (1924 – 1927) and his “Concert Music” works (1929 – 1930), in which most notably polyphonic techniques support and expand the concertante principle. An unbridled, wild pleasure in making music characterizes the habitus of these works, just as the act of “concerting” – in other words, a kind of musical to and fro between soloist and orchestra – characterizes Hindemith’s oeuvre. In the “Chamber Music” works, the instrumental soloist constantly comes up against a “soloistic”ensemble – thus referring in an almost neo-Baroque style to the traditional concerti grossi of the past. In contrast, in his violin concerto dating from 1939 Hindemith leans more towards the great concertos of the nineteenth century; one could also say, towards the Beethovenian model, in which the soloist, as an attentive individual, faces the collective of the full orchestra. The formal structure of the concerto consists of three movements (Mäßigbewegte Halbe – Langsam – Lebhaft), and a tonal relationship is also clearly audible.
Despite the unfavourable circumstances – communication from Switzerland with the publishing house in Germany was disrupted, the violinist Georg Kulenkampff did not dare to give the première due to political pressure – Hindemith rated the work as “decent”, declaring that it could be “presented anywhere, with a clear conscience.” The première took place in Amsterdam on March 14, 1940, and was given by violinist Friedrich Hellman, under conductor Willem Mengelberg. However, in the absence of Hindemith, who was by now already in the USA, the next stopover in his exile.
Arabella Steinbacher has a very special rapport with this work, as her father once worked with the composer as a solo-répétiteur on his opera "Die Harmonie der Welt" (= The harmony of the world) in Bremen. She describes the Hindemith concerto mainly from a violinist’s perspective as being physically very strenuous and challenging.