Third Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 72
(Performance Edition)
The Joseph Achron Society is proud to present the first published edition of Achron's Third Violin Concerto. Commissioned by Jascha Heifetz, this innovative and energetic concerto was premiered in Los Angeles in 1939, with the composer as soloist and Otto Klemperer conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In May 2011, the Brandenburg Symphony presented the first performance in over 70 years, using the performance edition produced and published by the Joseph Achron Society.
For information on renting the score and parts, please fill out the form on our Contact Us page.
For information on renting the score and parts, please fill out the form on our Contact Us page.
Audio Sample
May 27, 2011 • Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany
Gernot Süßmuth, violinist
Robin Engelen, conductor
Brandenburger Symphoniker
Historical Background and Musical Analysis
Dr. Joshua Walden, Oxford University
The
composer and violinist Joseph Achron created
what would become his most enduring works during the early period of his career,
after joining the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music in 1911. In such
compositions as “Hebrew Melody,” Achron experimented with the integration of
techniques and idioms of both Western art music and the Jewish traditional and
religious music that he recalled from personal experience or studied in the writings
of ethnographers in the Society. He later turned more frequently to large-scale
genres, and his three violin concertos span the period of his life spent in the
United States, providing a view into the ways his compositional priorities
changed over time after his immigration in 1924. The Violin Concerto No. 3
demonstrates Achron’s skilled idiomatic writing for violin and his inventive
compositional technique during the last years of his career, in which he
experimented with complex polytonal and contrapuntal textures while also maintaining
his taste for expressive melodies and lush harmonic progressions. Although the
work appears to eschew overt reference to Jewish traditional music, it reveals
the lasting influence on his compositional style of his dedicated research into
this material.
Achron composed his Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 60, in 1925, and dedicated it to Jascha Heifetz, who, like Achron, had studied violin in the St. Petersburg Conservatory studio of Leopold Auer, and who pioneered Achron’s early works. Achron performed the concerto’s premiere with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Sergey Koussevitzky. This work, which opens with a virtuosic and expansive first movement followed by an energetic, rhythmic set of “Improvisations sur deux thèmes yemeniques,” combines Achron’s interests in both compositional modernism and Jewish traditional motifs. Achron also delivered the first performance of his Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 68, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Otto Klemperer, in 1936. He began work on the Violin Concerto No. 3 in New York in December 1933, having received a commission from Heifetz. After a hiatus during which he moved to Los Angeles, Achron returned to the piece in 1935, and completed it in 1937. Achron played in the premiere performances on 31 March and 1 April 1939, accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Klemperer, who sought to associate Achron’s new concerto with the legacy of nineteenth-century Russian composers by programming it between Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky’s fantasy overture “Romeo and Juliet” and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite “Sheherazade.”
This concerto conforms to the genre’s eighteenth-century formal conventions, with a first movement marked allegro non troppo, a slow and singing second movement, and a lively finale. The first movement begins with a bold orchestral introduction that opens with abrupt flourishes and broad chords, followed by an undulating passage in octaves in winds, strings, and piano, and concluding with a trill on F natural across the orchestra. The violin enters inconspicuously with a trill on the same pitch, before emerging from the mass of sound as soloist. Partway through the movement, Achron introduces additive rhythms in the orchestra, dividing the meter into groups of 3+2+3. Such rhythmic patterns carry multivalent musical associations: they recall structures found in dance traditions from regions of Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere, as well as in ragtime and jazz, and they appear in works that take inspiration from folk and popular genres by composers including Béla Bartók and George Gershwin. In the cadenza, the violinist develops and juxtaposes the movement’s principle melodic themes in a virtuosic climax.
In the second movement, the soloist plays a poignant extended melody, accompanied by a string orchestra that builds gradually from the low registers upward. All sections are subdivided into multiple lines and the instruments are muted, producing a warm, hushed sonority and rich, multi-layered harmonies. The vibrancy of the harp complements the timbres of the strings, and gong strokes at the opening and closing of the movement set it apart from the ebullient surrounding movements as a dream-like meditation. This movement recalls “Hebrew Melody” in its meter, the repeated juxtaposition of duple and triple rhythms, and the elegiac coda in which the violin returns to the opening thematic material with no accompaniment other than a whispered chord in the final bars. It thus appears to look back to the composition that proved a turning point in Achron’s early career.
The “Dance Giocoso” is propelled by perpetual rhythmic dynamism. Instrumental sections trade off rapid gestures in a tightly woven orchestral fabric. The movement has a varied character that contrasts phrases in a martial spirit with orchestral galops and passages intimating the influence of jazz syncopations. Achron plays with a range of timbres, calling for pizzicato and col legno in the string sections and wah wah and kazoo mutes in brass, in a full orchestra that incorporates piano, harp, and percussion. The solo violin plays syncopated, staccato patterns that range from the lowest to the highest limits of its range. Among the multiple dance gestures in this movement, Achron brings back the additive rhythms heard in the first movement, rearranged in crisp patterns of 3+3+2 that contribute a sense of groove. Achron describes the movement as a ballet, a suggestion that highlights the intermittent resemblances to music of Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland, and calls for an imaginative performance that outlines an abstract narrative program through the music’s contrasting themes.
With its publication here, Achron’s valuable contribution to the modern repertoire, previously a lost chapter of émigré music making in America, becomes available for the first time.
Achron composed his Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 60, in 1925, and dedicated it to Jascha Heifetz, who, like Achron, had studied violin in the St. Petersburg Conservatory studio of Leopold Auer, and who pioneered Achron’s early works. Achron performed the concerto’s premiere with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Sergey Koussevitzky. This work, which opens with a virtuosic and expansive first movement followed by an energetic, rhythmic set of “Improvisations sur deux thèmes yemeniques,” combines Achron’s interests in both compositional modernism and Jewish traditional motifs. Achron also delivered the first performance of his Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 68, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Otto Klemperer, in 1936. He began work on the Violin Concerto No. 3 in New York in December 1933, having received a commission from Heifetz. After a hiatus during which he moved to Los Angeles, Achron returned to the piece in 1935, and completed it in 1937. Achron played in the premiere performances on 31 March and 1 April 1939, accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Klemperer, who sought to associate Achron’s new concerto with the legacy of nineteenth-century Russian composers by programming it between Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky’s fantasy overture “Romeo and Juliet” and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite “Sheherazade.”
This concerto conforms to the genre’s eighteenth-century formal conventions, with a first movement marked allegro non troppo, a slow and singing second movement, and a lively finale. The first movement begins with a bold orchestral introduction that opens with abrupt flourishes and broad chords, followed by an undulating passage in octaves in winds, strings, and piano, and concluding with a trill on F natural across the orchestra. The violin enters inconspicuously with a trill on the same pitch, before emerging from the mass of sound as soloist. Partway through the movement, Achron introduces additive rhythms in the orchestra, dividing the meter into groups of 3+2+3. Such rhythmic patterns carry multivalent musical associations: they recall structures found in dance traditions from regions of Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere, as well as in ragtime and jazz, and they appear in works that take inspiration from folk and popular genres by composers including Béla Bartók and George Gershwin. In the cadenza, the violinist develops and juxtaposes the movement’s principle melodic themes in a virtuosic climax.
In the second movement, the soloist plays a poignant extended melody, accompanied by a string orchestra that builds gradually from the low registers upward. All sections are subdivided into multiple lines and the instruments are muted, producing a warm, hushed sonority and rich, multi-layered harmonies. The vibrancy of the harp complements the timbres of the strings, and gong strokes at the opening and closing of the movement set it apart from the ebullient surrounding movements as a dream-like meditation. This movement recalls “Hebrew Melody” in its meter, the repeated juxtaposition of duple and triple rhythms, and the elegiac coda in which the violin returns to the opening thematic material with no accompaniment other than a whispered chord in the final bars. It thus appears to look back to the composition that proved a turning point in Achron’s early career.
The “Dance Giocoso” is propelled by perpetual rhythmic dynamism. Instrumental sections trade off rapid gestures in a tightly woven orchestral fabric. The movement has a varied character that contrasts phrases in a martial spirit with orchestral galops and passages intimating the influence of jazz syncopations. Achron plays with a range of timbres, calling for pizzicato and col legno in the string sections and wah wah and kazoo mutes in brass, in a full orchestra that incorporates piano, harp, and percussion. The solo violin plays syncopated, staccato patterns that range from the lowest to the highest limits of its range. Among the multiple dance gestures in this movement, Achron brings back the additive rhythms heard in the first movement, rearranged in crisp patterns of 3+3+2 that contribute a sense of groove. Achron describes the movement as a ballet, a suggestion that highlights the intermittent resemblances to music of Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland, and calls for an imaginative performance that outlines an abstract narrative program through the music’s contrasting themes.
With its publication here, Achron’s valuable contribution to the modern repertoire, previously a lost chapter of émigré music making in America, becomes available for the first time.
