Violin Concerto No.2 in D minor, Op.44

Brahms’s reaction on first hearing Bruch’s Violin Concerto in D minor was that there ought to be a law against Adagio first movements. Two months later he admitted he was wrong and six years after that, although he was probably quite unaware of it, he paid Bruch a sincere compliment by reshaping the opening theme of that very same Adagio in D minor as the main theme of the Poco allegretto in his Third Symphony. Thirty four years later again Prokofiev introduced into his First Violin Concerto (which begins with an Andantino, incidentally) a melody not unlike another of the main themes of Bruch’s opening Adagio.

Both of those highly expressive ideas are introduced by the soloist in that irresistibly lyrical way that Bruch has with the violin. Between them there is a loud and curiously lugubrious march-like theme featuring the heavy brass of the orchestra. Although it is immediately taken up by the violin in vigorous double stops, and although Bruch makes efforts to integrate it in the later stages of the sonata-form construction, it is difficult to reconcile that theme with the poetic material round it. But perhaps it can be explained by a programme which Pablo Sarasate, for whom the work was written, is said to have suggested to the composer: as described in Christopher Fifield’s very useful book on Bruch, the scene is “a battlefield littered with the dead and the dying, among whom a young woman searches for the man she loves; a funeral march accompanies a burial procession.“

The short second movement is a recitative with dramatic interjections from the orchestra and virtuoso solo passages on the violin alternating with intimations of the fanfare-like motif which eventually and tentatively opens the Finale. The most important material in this last movement, however, is the cheerful rondo theme introduced after a short cadenza on the violin and depicting, it is said, ”the tumult of a cavalry regiment.“ Well, the cavalry had to come sooner or later.

The second of Max Bruch’s three violin concertos was first performed at the Crystal Palace in London in November 1877 withfghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~

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