Dr. Sanna Pederson, University of Oklahoma
While paging through Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music yesterday, my eye caught an unexpected entry (between “Anzoletti, Marco” and “Apponyi, Count”): Waiting to applaud until the end of the work is called an innovation of late–and this book was published in 1929! Mr. Cobbett prefers clapping and even encores of individual movements of a … Read more
My knowledge of the last years of the Joachim Quartet is much more extensive than of their first concerts. When I think of the year of their first season, 1869, images of Berlin in an impoverished state came to mind. For instance, when Amy Fay arrived that year from Boston to study piano, she pronounced … Read more
Researching Joachim’s concerts at the Leipzig Gewandhaus led me to the astonishing profusion of works by Louis Spohr on the concerts throughout the nineteenth century. A review from Hanslick on the occasion of a Joachim visit to Vienna in 1875 included an appreciation of the composer’s music. Hanslick had a nostalgic view of Spohr’s music … Read more
The centennial of Joachim’s birth in 1931 was observed in Berlin and elsewhere with tributes recalling the important part he had played in so many aspects of musical life. Only a few years later the Nazi re-writing of Germany history began, in which Jewish artists and intellectuals were purged from the German culture they helped … Read more
Yesterday I came upon a review that sheds light on the popularity of Ludwig Spohr’s violin music, which was the question I was left with after researching the repertoire of violin soloists at the Leipzig Gewandhaus over the nineteenth century. The reception history of Spohr isn’t a topic simply to google or look up on … Read more
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. … Read more
Performing all the Beethoven Quartets <p style=”text-align: left;”>One of the Joachim Quartet’s most significant achievements was their performances of the complete Beethoven quartets as a five-day cycle. The first time was in May of 1903 at the Bonn Beethoven Haus Festival, and it took place despite strong objections by the organizers. The quartet performed the … Read more