brahms.jpgFrom the first moment I heard the Brahms violin concerto in D, I loved it. Brahms offers an incredible look into strong string writing with enormously strong melodic writing. And although Brahms is very conservative in his structural language, I don’t think people don’t give him enough credit for his midground chromaticism - he gets short changed as a super serious composer. And until Schoenberg did his masterful analysis of Brahms’ works he was even overlooked.

So - I love the violin concerto for its incredible beauty. In the simplicity of his melody lines he is able to derive (truly derive) some incredible presence. He’s great with limited motivic material (think Symphony number 4 - another favorite) and here is no exception. One of the funny things I find about this piece though is that is doesn’t feel complete. Even though traditionally it’s fine to end a concerto in three movements, this one just feels short. There is too much unwound energy in the final movement and it’s particularly unweighted compared to the first movement. It just feels unbalanced to me. It needs a fugue or a passacaglia at the end - or something. I feel that so strongly, I actually wonder if he started another movement, but trashed it for some reason. We’ll never know. Hilary Hahn is a great soloist for this work and she does a wonderful job here. Her tone is not too ormellow like some of the previous masters who took this work on - she has a vibrancy and intensity that I think really suits the work. And her choice of cadenza is perfect. I’ve heard several other of the written cadenzas, and her’s is right on (it helps that it was written with help from the soloist Brahms wrote the concerto for). The recording is fine -not as clear as I like and a little lacking in depth, but warm. It’ll do, but it just makes me want to hear this one live.

Originally published on WordPress on February 03, 2007. Migrated to this blog on May 29, 2025.