Joachim Quartet Berlin

The Joseph Joachim Quartet, founded by the great Geiger himself, is still going strong. In its latest incarnation its members are all faculty at the Universität der Künste in Berlin: violinists Viviane Hagner and Latica Honda-Rosenberg, violist Hartmut Rohde, and cellist Jens Peter Maintz. On May 29 at the UdK Joseph-Joachim-Konzertsaal they presented an ingenious program of 2+4 : 2+4 (Mozart + Ravel) – by which I mean they played a Mozart Quartet (the incredible late quartet in B flat, K.589) and the formidable Ravel Violin-Cello Duo in the first half, and the gorgeous Mozart Violin-Viola Duo in B-flat and Ravel's unique Quartet in the second. Symmetrical programming. Equal division of labor. Genius.

All four members are extremely accomplished players. They gave polished performances with plenty of style and natural, unforced musicality -- an absolute pleasure to listen to. The second and fourth movements of the Ravel quartet were taken at hair-raising speed but without necessitating technical compromises. These four play well together, and it was hardly believable that it was their first performance as a quartet. That said, I was not the only person in the audience who noticed that amidst excellence, there was one star who really shone: the cellist. I first saw Mainz as a chamber musician partnering with Janine Jansen at the Kammermusiksaal. She is a top-level soloist and he entirely held his own in such august company. I’m excited to see the current configuration of the Joachim Quartet again – maybe they will even play music by Brahms, Joachim’s erstwhile "BFF."

Piecing Together the Story of a Strad… A follow-up to: "You can hold the Strad but you can’t play it" (May 4, 2011)

Rudolf Ernst Pliverics (1878-1964) was a Berlin violin maker and the co-author, with Albert Fuchs, of Taxe Der Streichinstrumente (Musikverlag F. Hofmeister, 1978).

George Schlieps (1894-1977) was a Russian-born German violin maker (he was the nephew of Alexander Glazunov) who worked in Helsinki, Stockholm, Estonia, Berlin, and England before immigrating to New York City in 1950. He and his son Armin worked for Rembert Wurlitzer and then opened their own shop. Armin Schlieps (1931-2005) was a bow maker who subsequently moved to Seattle and ran his own shop there.

The 1703 Strad now held at the Berlin Music Instrument Museum (Catalogue Number 4467) came into George Schlieps’s hands during WW2 according to Pliverics. He noted also that it had undergone multiple repairs and that the top had been replaced.

Schlieps lived in Berlin from 1944 till 1947 repairing violins. Who gave him the Strad? Where did it come from?

Museum records show only that the violin entered its collection in Charlottenburg, a predecessor of the present building next to the Philharmonie, on October 9, 1956. By then Schlieps was settled in New York.

Between 1947 and 1956 the violin was supposedly played by members of the Berlin Philharmonie, but we don't know who.

It was lovingly restored by Olga Adelmann (1913-2000) and subjected to a number of authentication tests. Dr. Annette Otterstedt, the musicologist who worked closely with Adelmann, provided me with all the known documentation concerning the violin. An expert on the Alemannic School [Die Alemannische Schule] of violin making (as well as being a keen gamba player), Otterstedt contends that the Cremona School was an aberration, not the Ur-School, of violin making—and that German craftsmanship was in fact much more prevalent and influential than has ever been acknowledged before by violin historians.

Otterstedt, who trained with the late Carl Dahlhaus, embodies an enviable synthesis of musicology and organology that is inspiring to me personally. Her research into, and championing of, Alemannic instruments is valuable on its own merits but also for deemphasizing and defetishizing Cremona instruments.

A Berlin Geigenbauer told me recently that he gets at least a few calls every week from strangers who have supposedly found long-lost Strads in their attics. He is good-natured but gets annoyed by all this.

The genius mythology surrounding Stradivari is a Romantic invention—he wasn’t “Beethovenified” until Fétis’s hagiographical biography came out in 1856—and it’s important to recognize that this inflated view of the man originated in a later era.

Even as we strive to cultivate historiographical awareness, though, we are faced with this tangible object, an instrument from early in his “Golden Period,” which poses real questions for us.

Alex Ross has recently published a series of beautiful essays and blog posts demystifying Wagner the gargantuan cultural icon by focusing on a few bars from Die Walküre, Act III. By keeping it real, and focussed, he arrives at a new understanding of Wagner’s greatness, stripped of heavy baggage. Piecing together the story of this little violin might just do the same for Stradivari… if only there were more pieces to work with!

In search of the ideal recording of Bach's St. Matthew Passion

Ever since performing the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin recently, I've become kind of obsessed with finding the perfect recording. Helmuth Rilling comes pretty close -- but Quasthoff (follow the link) to my ear sounds ein bisschen too self-confident in his expression of the text and the melody. "Mache dich mein Herze rein"? This should be sung with skill but also with humility, as my friend Simon Robinson did so beautifully in recent performances (Quastoff 0/Robinson 1). I just got John Eliot Gardiner's version which is damn near perfect only for someone with perfect pitch the half-step dip makes all my Affektenlehre verwirrt! If anyone has a favorite recording I wanna hear from you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjoGspzkYw8

"You can hold the Strad but you can’t play it"

Today my Strad-hunting took me to the Musikinstrumentmuseum in Berlin which boasts a 1703 violin in its collection. They pulled it from the display for me so I could meet it in a private room. I had a shoulder rest and bow ready so imagine my disappointment when the official handed me a pair of white handschuhe (gloves) and told me it was not in playable condition. A quick examination even by my untrained eyes told me why: this was a battered instrument, a survivor of domestic abuse, copious knocks and bruises, and multiple repairs. Its right f-hole was askew and someone had wound an E-string adjustor into the grain so bad it had dented the wood and formed a black mark. My heart ached for this instrument: it was the Frankenstein of violins! I was curious about its provenance but it is shrouded in mystery. I don’t know where it went after leaving Stradivari’s workshop; all that is known is:

· It was brought to Germany from Russia in the 1950s or 60s by a Geigenbauer named Schlieps, according to a dealer called Rudolf Pliverics.

· It was authenticated in 1969 by Malcolm R. Sadler of Ealing-Strings in London

· According to a dendrochronologist at Hamburg University in 1993 it was definitely made of wood dating from no later than 1680.

· It was played by various members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

· It was restored by Geigenbauerin Olga Adelmann, who was the first-ever female violin-maker, and trained during the Nazi era (oh my god, can you imagine?)

[Pictures to follow]

Strad-hunting (Part 3/3)

I forgot to post this until now. In the middle of March I learned that the 1732 “Red Diamond” Stradivari was being repaired at a New York City luthier’s and went on the hunt. I found the luthier, but the violin sadly was not available that day. The scent of the trail did however lead to a wonderful opportunity to play a Vuillaume that once belonged to Spivakov (super bright E string, of course, and blazingly brilliant in Tchaikovsky), a 1704 Stradivari (actually kind of disappointing—it had undergone multiple repairs), an Andrea Amati (nice! not sure what year) and—best of all—a seriously light bow made by François Nicolas Voirin (1833-1885). I think he was related to Vuillaume (cousins?); he revolutionized the Tourte model by making the stick thinner yet somehow stronger. I hadn’t realized until that day what an enormous difference it makes to play with such a light and beautiful bow: my right arm felt unworthy. The coveted Strad may have failed to materialize, but… well, as a wise man once said, you go looking for “this” and you find “that.”

[Pictured: the Vuillaume]

Kalliwoda Duets for Violin and Viola, Op. 208

The string duo repertory is not huge but there are some gems—among them Mozart’s Duos for Violin and Viola and Duos for Violin and Cello by Ravel and Kodaly. The challenge for the composer is to create a full sonority without sounding like a string quartet with members missing. Mozart’s Duos are at times brilliant, like the Sinfonia Concertante without the orchestra (Brahms didn’t write any duos, despite having written a Double Concerto for Violin and Cello).

The Duos by Jan Kalliwoda (1801-1866) are new to me. His solutions to the problem of how to write for the 2 instruments together struck me as ingenious, while stylistically he tips his hat at Schubert and Dvorak—unsurprisingly for a violinist born and trained in Prague. But his voice is entirely his own. Of the two, the second in G-Major is the more striking: from the opening Pastorale (a Romantic-Edenic throwback) and Allegro moderato in G-minor (might Mozart have sounded like this if he’d lived a few more years?) to the interplay of pizzicato, counterpoint, and occasional flashes of virtuosity in the last three movements, the possibilities of violin-and-viola texture are explored fully. He succeeds in his own individual way at making this combo sound complete. As a violinist, I’ve long felt musically “completed” when partnering with a pianist; who knew I could feel the same with a violist?

Bach's Chaconne and ちょうちょ

Hilfsaktion für Japan was the latest in a series of events organized by Japanese artists based in Berlin to raise funds for relief efforts in the aftermath of the tsunami. More than 100 artists donated paintings, drawings, and photographs, which were given away at a raffle at the Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum in Dahlem. I would guess that in the course of one afternoon, they raised about 20,000 Euro—all to go directly to the Red Cross.

Before the raffle there were performances given by musicians, a dancer, and a poet. Violinist Sophia Jaffe played Bach’s D-minor Partita in its entirety – with Zehetmairesque ornaments on the repeats, beautiful flowing lines, lots of intelligent ideas, and unforced gravitas – and then blew us away with a stylish Ysaye No. 5. Soprano Yumiko Sato sang traditional Japanese folksongs, accompanied by guitarist Takeshi Nishimoto, including ちょうちょ[butterfly]. Worlds apart musically, but what a poignant reminder of how music can make us all more human somehow – and always can, not only at times like these.