Beethoven's Violin Concerto, and Leonidas Kavakos

Until a few days ago, I had 90 recordings of Beethoven's violin concerto on my shelves. Then a good friend sent me another, so I now have 91. This 91^st is played and conducted by Leonidas Kavakos, a violinist I have liked for a couple of decades now. This 91^st is well played by orchestra (Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra) and soloist, and the recording (Sony) is very satisfactory.

So far, so good. One notices immediately, however, that the concerto is going to last for over 49 minutes (from memory, Heifetz and Toscanini raced through the same work in 39 minutes). Beethoven and Elgar thus tie for longest violin concertos! With Kavakos, the first movement alone takes over 27 minutes, of which at least five are occupied by a somewhat grotesque cadenza adapted by Kavakos from one Beethoven wrote for a piano version of the concerto. The first movement is marked allegro ma non troppo and it certainly is not troppo here; whether it is allegro is another matter -- during the G minor interlude in the first movement the music becomes almost static.

There are many cadenzas available for this concerto; Ruggiero Ricci once recorded those by David, Joachim, Laub, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, Saint-Saëns, Auer, Ysaÿe, Busoni, Kreisler, Milstein, and Schnittke. I like short, brilliant cadenzas that do not hold up the progress of the music for too long. Why anyone would want to adapt Beethoven's piano version cadenza for a violin is beyond my comprehension (as is the view of the original instrument brigade that the sound world of the original has to be respected and re-created, when composers such as Bach and Beethoven had no scruples about adapting their music to accommodate quite different sounds and instruments).

Of the other 90 versions of the concerto on my shelves, my favourites in alphabetical order remain Batiashvili (2007), Busch (1949), Grumiaux (1966), Kreisler (1926), Kulenkampff (1936), Neveu (1949), Röhn (1944), Schneiderhan (1962), and Suk (1965). Enough! We need a 20 year moratorium on recordings of the Beethoven violin concerto.