Frang juxtaposes Beethoven’s epic, lyrical work with Stravinsky’s compact violin concerto, which pays spiky tribute to 18th century models. The conductor is Pekka Kuusisto, himself an adventurous violinist, in his role as Artistic Best Friend of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.

Musical Mekka with Pekka: A conversation on Stravinsky and Beethoven VIOLIN CONCERTOS

Pekka Kuusisto (PK): What was your first encounter with the Beethoven Violin Concerto?

Vilde Frang (VF): I actually don’t remember.

PK: So what’s the earliest one you do remember?

VF: Spinning around to it at home in Oslo, creating my own little choreography. I think I must have been around five, so, it has been in my consciousness for as long as I can remember – from my earliest days with the violin, if not before.

PK: I have this feeling that the first time I actively heard any of it was on television. There was this silly car commercial featuring just the last four measures. This guy with big hair, wearing tails (just an actor pretending to play violin) makes this grand gesture at the end, then goes and sits in a nice sports car and drives home. I was very impressed, you know, I was quite small. A few years later I heard the piece in its entirety – “Hey! That’s the car commercial!”

VF: That was your first encounter?

PK: Yes! The other one was in the studio of a wonderful gentleman called Tuomas Haapanen, now in his 90s, who has taught hundreds of Finnish fiddle players. I was having a lesson, and one of his older students came in asking something about the Beethoven Concerto. My teacher, Tuomas, played the opening octaves, and it didn’t go exactly as planned…

VF: I can relate to that!

PK: Me too! Well, the older student wisecracked about his “great intonation”, and Professor Haapanen warned, “Yes, it’s difficult immediately, right from the beginning”. Now, every time I play it, I can’t get that out of my mind. It’s the opening’s curse.

VF: It’s extremely delicate and transparent, that opening! I didn’t study it early, as a prodigy. I would take up other pieces that were much too difficult for me, like the Tchaikovsky or Mendelssohn, concertos I actually couldn’t really manage yet somehow made me develop a lot in the attempt. Whereas Beethoven I first studied only in my teens. When you’re young you dive right in – you don’t have that barrier of respect for the piece – but as a teenager I was so aware I needed to do it properly, meticulously, having analysed it well, and I was quite daunted by the whole process. It took me years to get over that.

PK: Going back to how it starts for the fiddle player and everything that comes beforehand, it’s like all the jokes are already told before the soloist enters. Who is the soloist in this piece? It makes sense in a way to study Tchaikovsky earlier in one’s childhood, since the role of the soloist is perhaps a bit more one-dimensional, whereas in the Beethoven, or something like Sibelius or Brahms I suppose, it’s a much harder question to figure out who you are when you’re playing. Often you can take on a concertmaster personality. There are long stretches in the piece when you’re actually playing accompanist to various groups of musicians in the orchestra.

VF: Yes!

PK: So at times you’re channelling something, telling your own story, and at other times you just have to be really appreciative of the stories that are going on in the orchestra.

VF: That really provided me the key to unlocking the piece: realising I was actually a small part of something bigger. And being here with you and with Bremen, I really feel in such a comfort zone. In the position of a soloist, I always find I have something to lose, whereas what makes this so special is you feel it’s a totally different attitude. You feel you have everything to gain by coming together, gathering together.

PK: Everyone cares.

VF: Everyone cares!

PK: And I suppose the pandemic situation makes it even more obvious how important everyone feels it is to get back together and play.

VF: Absolutely. Ever since we played this concerto together for the first time, there’s been a sense of obviousness to it. I was left feeling so uplifted after our first run of it together in February of 2019. I remember finishing that week and feeling like a little kid after Christmas, who wonders: “Why can’t it be Christmas every week?”

PK: You sort of saved my bacon back then. I was supposed to play and couldn’t. Then you glided in like a swan…

VF: I was so fortunate; that was a lucky coincidence. And the fact that we’re here, able to realise this now, is something truly, truly special.

PK: I feel the same.

VF: Funnily enough, at the same time as I started to study the Beethoven Concerto, I also took up the Stravinsky Concerto. I like the possibility of taking up two different concertos and making one articulate the other, sort of seeing them in a different light, or how one amplifies the other. It’s hard to explain, but I always felt some sort of relation between the two. And I don’t really have a good explanation, but both of them are very light, almost like coloratura…

PK: I remember reading somewhere that the violinist Beethoven’s Concerto was written for had a flute-like sound, that he was renowned for his clear bird-like, flute-like voice. “He plays the violin superbly, and in his own way he is perfect and possibly unique”, wrote the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung of Franz Clement in April 1805. “But in his own way, of course. Not for him the vigorous, bold, strong playing, the moving, forceful Adagio, the powerful bow and tone that characterise the Rode–Viotti school; rather, his playing is indescribably dainty, pleasing and elegant; it has a delicacy and cleanness that are utterly delightful and undoubtedly secure Clement a place among the most consummate violinists.”

VF: Ah, that’s interesting. That explains the second movement entrance in the Beethoven.

PK: And then of course the Stravinsky calls to mind Samuel Dushkin’s highly individual sound. Maybe that’s something… Stravinsky was funny. I remember reading that he and Sibelius traded insults at one point. But then later, when Sibelius was already in the grave, Stravinsky was in Helsinki receiving a prize, and he made a special trip to put flowers on Sibelius’s grave and actually talked to his tombstone. I was so surprised to hear that, because I’ve always thought of him as – well, not the kind of guy who would talk to graves. But he did. There are even wonderful photographs of that moment. So there was this kind of highly spiritual side to him. I’ve felt for a long time already that the second Aria – the Concerto’s third movement – is one of a very few honestly emotional pieces of his, really unhappy, near-desperate. There’s no sarcasm or irony in it. It’s raw sadness.

VF: And that’s a huge contrast to the other movements, isn’t it? They’re a bit of a spectacle. It’s a truly hilarious concerto, like a circus.

PK: It would be great to be able to study Dushkin’s hand, because so much of the stuff they wrote together, a lot of the violin and piano pieces, sit in such a peculiar way. It would be nice to know which violin exercises he had for breakfast – if this was what came naturally to him.

VF: Apparently he had to reconsider that first stretch…

PK: It looked impossible on the page at first, and then…

VF: He slept on it, and…

PK: Put his hand in a stretcher… No, it’s a beautiful thing. Somehow the DNA of the whole thing is in that one chord, and it sits like a traffic sign at the opening of each movement, just reminding you where the material comes from.