SKU: BR.PB-16110

ISBN 9790004214374. 10 x 12.5 inches.

Johannes Brahms's only violin concerto, one of the most important violin concertos of the 19th century, is now a central repertoire piece. This fact is all the more notable, as, by his own account, Brahms understood all too little about the instrument. The concerto was composed at Worthersee during the summer of 1878 in collaboration with Joseph Joachim, a leading contemporary violinist. The solo part is extremely demanding, with really unusual difficulties. This circumstance did not go unnoticed by the critics of the first performance: Even to Joachim, the battled-seasoned wrestler, the technically difficult and tricky solo part was to be mastered only with obvious effort. Evidencing this close collaboration between composer and performer is not only the work's genesis and publication history, together with its dedication to Joachim, but also its solo cadenza. Based on the New Brahms Complete Edition, this Urtext edition includes both the printed version of Joachim's cadenza as well as its shorter version arranged in 1885 by the violinist Marie Soldat.

SKU: BR.PB-15133-07

In Cooperation with G. Henle Verlag

ISBN 9790004214695. 6.5 x 9 inches.

Bruch's evergreen for the first time in UrtextThanks to the premiere performance by Joseph Joachim and to the release of the printed edition in 1868, Max Bruch's Violin Concerto no. 1 zipped onto the road to success and has never left it since. Yet from the preface of the BreitkopfUrtext edition,one can infer how things looked like behind the dazzling facade. After the world premiere, the composer struggled for the definitive form. He wrote 3, 4 development sections in the finale, and sought the advice of celebrated virtuosi such as Joseph Joachim and Ferdinand David to revise the solo part. And after all this was done (see above), Bruch suffered under the work's popularity: Have I written nothing but this one concerto?The new Urtext edition is based primarily on the first edition. Next to the main source and the autograph, what is supremely interesting is a solo part with entries by Joachim and Bruch. It confirms how intensively the two men collaborated on honing the final form of the work.

SKU: BT.EMBZ14893

The concerto was inspired by István Várdai's play and is dedicated to him. The triple movement structure and the character of the movements follow the patterns of classical concertos, while the thematic connections spanning the movements rather reflect the structural principles of Romantic symphonies. In the first movement, which resembles the form of a sonata, the characters of the themes are spectacularly separated. The motif of the main theme, constructed with glissandos, is supplemented by a theme the composer refers to as a motif of fate, and the two together form a significant contrast with the minor theme with its lyrical tone and the playful, ending themeresembling a children's song. The contrasts between depth and height, as well as darkness and light, have a significant role in all three movements. The music of the first movement gradually rises to increasingly bright and higher regions, the gloomy atmosphere of the marginal parts in the second movement is offset by the tune's transcendental light in its central part, while the rondo theme of the third movement with its 6/8 metre dance-like character is supplemented with motifs of a contrasting nature from the earlier movements.