The Joachim tradition at the Gewandhaus

Joachim and the Gewandhaus: a sixty-year symbiosis

Among the lore of this historic institution is Joachim’s debut as a twelve-year-old at the Gewandhaus in 1843. (Robert Eshbach has documented this event on his website). The Gewandhaus’s conductor Felix Mendelssohn and concertmaster Ferdinand David oversaw Joachim’s development as the child prodigy went through his teenage years.¹See Eshbach’s piece on David, Mendelssohn, and Joachim. He was a frequent soloist in the 1840s, and officially concertmaster in 1850. Subsequently, when there were important events to be observed, Joachim was part of the proceedings. This included performing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto on a concert of 5 November 1857 for the tenth anniversary of Mendelssohn’s death.
When the new, enlarged Gewandhaus was dedicated on 13 December 1884, Joachim performed the A major Mozart Violin Concerto and the Adagio from the Spohr Violin Concerto No. 6 on one of the three concerts.²The three concerts were on three successive days: 11 December featured Beethoven’s Ninth, 12 December had Handel’s Messiah, and the concert on the 13th also had the singer Hermine Spies. Die hundertundfünfzigjährige Geschichte der Leipziger Gewandhaus-Concerte, 150-151. As a book published on the occasion explained: “Josef Joachim, of all people, could not be absent from the ‘consecration of the house’, the new one, after his past, which is so closely connected with the past of the Gewandhaus!”³“Josef Joachim gerade – so wird man wohl sagen können – durfte nach seiner Vergangenheit, der so sehr mit der Vergangenheit des Gewandhauses verknüpften, doch nicht fehlen bei der ‘Weihe des Hauses’, des neuen!”Die hundertundfünfzigjährige Geschichte der Leipziger Gewandhaus-Concerte, 151. Another historic occasion was the dedication of the Mendelssohn statue in front of the building on 25 May 1892.

The Gewandhaus in the second half of the nineteenth century

Reading up on Henri Petri for the last post gave me food for thought about the orchestras at Leipzig and Dresden, where Petri served as concertmaster.⁴There are some interesting tidbits in a history of the Gewandhaus Orchestra from 1943, oddly unblemished by Nazi propaganda and war-time poor-quality publishing. See Hans-Joachim Nösselt, Das Gewandhausorchester. Entstehung und Entwicklung eines Orchesters (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1943), digitized by Dresden, SLUB. In 1850 the Gewandhaus orchestra was made up of 56 players, which was considered a large group: its 22 violins were more than all but five other European orchestras.

By 1880 the symphony orchestra’s transformation into a modern, high-profile institution was underway. Leipzig and Dresden kept to the practice of using a single orchestra for both their concert series and for the opera; Berlin’s Königliche Kapelle had a similar dual role. During Petri’s time as concertmaster in Leipzig (1882-89) he played under Carl Reinecke at the Gewandhaus, and Arthur Nikisch, Anton Seidl, and the young Gustav Mahler at the opera. The orchestra at this point was made up of 72 men, with players still doubling on other instruments. This practice was documented in 1883, when an oboist refused to play English horn because it was not in his contract. Arthur Nikisch weighed in, arguing that of course the oboist would play English horn; it was an unwritten understanding, just as the clarinetist also played bass clarinet, the bassoonist the contrabassoon, the flutist the piccolo, and the violinist the viola.⁵Nösselt, 183. However, after three years the vacant positions began specifying any required additional instruments in the job description. But it took a while to acquire a more formal approach to the hiring process. In 1889 there were pleas to follow the requirement for applicants to submit written applications. By 1893 the orchestra had added five more positions, totaling 77 players. They did have a pension fund, but it took ten years to qualify. The orchestra’s size had jumped to 100 musicians by 1907.⁶70 musicians in the Stadtorchester, 100 in the Gewandhaus: 20 1st violins, 20 2nd violins, 12 violas, 10 cellos, 10 basses. See Eugène d Harcourt, La musique actuelle en Allemagne et Autriche-Hongrie : conservatoires, concerts, théâtres, avec 90 portraits, vues et plans hors texte (Paris : F. Durdilly, 1908), 314, 319. http://archive.org/details/lamusiqueallemag00harc.

This advertisement from January 1898 makes clear that Leipzig’s first concertmaster filled three positions: for the Gewandhaus concerts, the city theater, and the church. The combined salaries amounted to 5487 marks.

The high turnover in concertmasters was at least partly due to the heavy duties that went along with the prestige. Carl Prill, who succeeded Petri in 1891, left for Vienna in 1897. Max Lewinger then replaced him, but moved on to Dresden after only one season. His successor, the virtuoso Felix Berber, tried unsuccessfully to get the opera orchestra position turned into a separate job; he ended up leaving instead.⁷Nösselt, 196.

New Year’s Day Concerts

The Gewandhaus Orchestra website has a marvelous searchable database of performances going back to 1781. The tradition of giving a New Year’s Day concert goes back as far as the records and has been observed most recently with a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth on 1 January 2020. On 1 January 1859 Joachim appeared as the soloist playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto which, incidentally, had only been on the program five times in the fourteen years since he had first played it.⁸These performances of the Beethoven Violin Concerto were by David, 26.2.1852; Kömpel, 3.2.1853; Laub, 24.11.1853; Dreyschock 26.10.1854; Laub 11.10.1857. See Eshbach for Joachim’s first performance of the Beethoven Concerto at the Gewandhaus. Starting in the mid-1870s it became part of the tradition to have Joachim on the concert. He appeared on fifteen of the next 25 New Year’s Day concerts, with the last being 42 years after the first. These concerts included the premieres of the Brahms Violin Concerto in 1879 and the Brahms Double Concerto in 1888.

New Year’s Day concerts at the Gewandhaus, 1859-1901

The next table presents all of Joachim’s appearances on Gewandhaus concerts as a soloist. It also lists the performances by fifteen violinists who had studied with him, including two of the orchestra’s concertmasters, Henri Petri and Carl Prill. Their repertoire was comprised mainly of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Brahms.

Concerts with Joachim or a Joachim student at the Gewandhaus

As the table indicates, Joachim and his students also maintained a strong connection with Ludwig Spohr’s violin music, which lasted into the twentieth century. Ludwig Spohr was Ferdinand David’s teacher, and his concertos were part of Joachim’s repertoire for his entire career. Still, I did not expect such a bounty of Spohr: just look at this table of performances of his works for violin and orchestra at the Gewandhaus! According to the Gewandhaus concert archive, a total of 370 performances of Spohr’s works were performed at the Gewandhaus over a period from 1800-1920; of these 110 were for violin and orchestra.

Concerts with a work for violin and orchestra by Ludwig Spohr

Spohr is clearly a topic that needs to be explored…another time!

To sum up: Joachim’s part in memorializing Leipzig’s musical heritage of Bach, Mendelssohn, and Schumann was a life-long labor of love. His role in the story of the Gewandhaus went beyond his legendary debut: his presence over the course of sixty years of orchestra concerts kept traditions alive.