General analytical view of the work
Let’s start with a quote from the Cambridge Music Handbook on the concerto’s relationship to other piddle period works :
« Rhythmic motifs involving repeated notes are also characteristic of other Beethoven works of the period, notably the first movements of the Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Fifth Symphony. In these movements the repeated notes drive the music forwards as if acting as an anacrusis, but the Violin Concerto begins on a downbeat, anchoring the motif and ensuring its stability. » (Stowell 1998: 62)
is that so certain ? I must agree that the repeated notes drive us forward, but I think Beethoven wanted to create ambiguity as to where the very first phrase starts, on the first or the second bar. The same ambiguity is found in the rhythmic motif opening the fifth symphony, but there only much clearly in the shape of an anacrusis. The violin concerto seems to ‘flatten’ the perception of musical material (Beethoven’s way of highlighting the violin part in the foreground, rather than the internal issues of the orchestral score as a whole. But this led to immense misguidedness in tagging the work as a ‘melodic’ one, contrary, with example, to the 4th piano concerto’s first motif, which is understood in the same Handbook as a rhythmic one : the repeated notes there are used to emphasize, on the contrary, the groundedness and richness of the harmony : while that is not the issue in the violin concerto. I think the work remains highly conflictual, with even great contrasts inside of the orchestra, with the timpani almost forcing the whole orchestra to join its own character at some points. Over the next two chapters, we will look at the exposition and the development of the first movement, and see how the changes Beethoven made from the early version to the Urtext we know can inform about the nature of the work and the goal of Beethoven's composition, in the workings of how the timpani rhythm is treated and weft around; and its relationship to the melodic material.
The modern concerto, a difficult genre for the violin
Why has the score been gravely misunderstood ? I think, besides any historical reason that has been put forward by R. Leibowitz, and the criticism R. Kolisch made of performers’ courage when facing Beethoven’s tempi, that Beethoven created a pure antagonism within the work, that is unresolved, only deepened in the work : the fact that the orchestra and the violin cannot be equal, whether that be in rhythmic precision, dynamic projection, harmonic richness : the violin loses, compared to the piano. On the contrary, the violin’s strengths are rather opposed to those of the orchestra : long tones, high register writing, softness (the ultimate example of this understanding of the instrument by Beethoven is found in the Benedictus from the Missa Solemnis), shortness of articulation. Beethoven's extension of the power of the orchestra, the prominent role he gives to the woodwinds, from the first symphony until the Agnus Dei of the Missa Solemnis, combined with his own frequentation of soloists whom he praised for their delicate tone and ability to convey intimacy through sound (especially concerning Franz Clement, who premiered and commissioned the concerto) created a sort of dilemma. I think this avowal of a rift between soloist and orchestra is what motivated Beethoven to write a piano version to the concerto, which to my humble opinion loses all of its interest because conflict and difficulty, formal struggle are totally absent form this version, save for the cadenza, where Beethoven could finally write something conflictual to the scale of the piano, rather than conflictual to the scale of the violin : e. g. the inclusion of timpani to the cadenza, as well as its mere scale.
Here are some examples – for the violin – of Beethoven’s unreconcilable soloist/orchestra dilemma in the work. But we will later see how homeomorphism helps, despite the uneven quality of the work, to keep a meaningful discourse on the part of the relationship between sections of the work : because Beethoven has a particular taste in this work to extend hypermetric units, so as to be able to linger on one of the hypermetric beats, and making it resonate through the orchestra or the soloist (as a way of blending iterations of the theme, in an homeomorphic way), elements of discourse are not understood as discrete, but rather as elemental, basic units for meaning permeating throughout the movement – this has already been explored and is a rather agreed upon point in motivic development as was developed by Haydn and put to its limits by Beethoven.
Short motifs and freedom with extended form.
The relationship between the different persepectives of the work lies both in the axis running from solo part to orchestral part, and the perpendicular axis running from original solo part to final solo part, the latter being far less certainly established than the former, given the fact that there’s a source missing : the score that was sent by Beethoven for publication. While the opposite is also true : the published version is far more certain than the original solo part, the former having been supplied with years of musicological studies.
The following examples follow my hypothesis this type of thinking – short term memory applied to short motives passing around – creates the ‘soaring’ quality of the work, rather than – mistakenly on the part of performers – slow tempi – and dull articulation. Expressivity comes, especially with Beethoven’s own understanding of dynamics, with a punch : even a pianissimo, as we saw in the Kreutzer sonata, must not be let go easily into the furnace of sound. The fact that the first movement exceeds in scale many things Beethoven wrote gives us a new ear in order to listen to it : we are not required anymore to notice and accumulate knowledge, but instead to merely recognize figures moving around.
Why have I come to this conclusion ? Because the concerto itself guides our ears toward this approach of listening to short elements rather than grandiose statements, and that great forms are built upon small bricks of material (the timpani motive) rather than the woodwind choir’s theme : and that the strings have almost always the ornamental role, or rather they play most of the short, repeated notes : this attention to small figures creates ambiguity for interpretation : how does one express these small notes, they being in the foreground ? I like to think of the long phrases as interruptions, illusions reigning, drawing us away from the bustling life and grammar of development, rather than the ‘main’ material : as in many of Beethoven’s middle period works, we build from the ground up (which is the reason why the first, second, third symphonies have shorter and shorter introductions, because the ‘ground’ is more and more clearly established there, without need of harmonic ambiguity in these opening sections).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZL8amUONdc
One very extreme example of this grand, soft vision of the work, embellishing all conflict within it, comes from the very great Oleg Kagan. Of course, it's not wrong, but it is just not the same work, it is a respectful reading, played with devotion.