Violin Concerto and Romances“Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Philippe Herreweghe offer us fresh insights into Beethoven’s concerto based on historical evidence, using period instruments. For example, Kopatchinskaja has purposefully adopted the principal characteristics of Clement’s style of playing ,as described by his contemporaries. She plays with a light, silvery touch, a natural pulse, and a totally unforced spontaneity. She has extended that sense of freedom by experimenting with some of the variants included in Beethoven’s autograph, “liberties” which are perfectly justifiable, since noody knows the full detail regarding the evolution of the concerto’s final printed version after its premiere. Kopatchinskaja also contributes her own arrangements of Beethoven’s original cadenzas for the piano version of this concerto; these have inevitably required “overdubbing” in order to realise the piano part in violin and give a soft and tender simplicity and a purity of line reminiscent of Franz Clement who was the recipient of the work.”
ROBIN STOWELL
Robin Stowell is the author of Beethoven: violin concerto
(Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Fragment of a violin concerto
“Many problems that trouble performers are resolved automatically when they have the chance to study the autograph manuscript of the work in question under the guidance of a musicologist.Such was the case with Patricia Kopatchinskaja during the preparation of this recording.Her question was whether the incomplete first movement of a violin concerto in C major by Ludwig van Beethoven,WoO 5, was a fragmentary composition, or one that had merely come down to us in fragmentary form.She came to visit the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna,where Beethoven’s manuscript of this work is held, and got her answer from the manuscript itself.”
OTTO BIBA
Excerpts from the booklet notes
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