The earliest known appearance of the phrase ‘one-hit wonder’ was in a New York newspaper in 1914. Remarkably, the German Romantic composer Max Bruch was still alive at this time – and although it seems unlikely that he was familiar with the term, it is tempting to apply it to Bruch himself, courtesy of the work that opens his disc. Bruch came in later years to curse the astonishing success and popularity of his First Violin Concerto, completed when he was just 28 years old: none of his considerable later output was to come anywhere near its fame, and he remains principally known to music-lovers today because of this very same piece.

Bruch began his Concerto in the summer of 1864. Buoyed up by critical acclaim of several large-scale choral and orchestral works, he decided to tackle a new genre. It was not easy going: he wrote to a friend in November 1865 that he did not ‘feel sure of my feet on this terrain. Do you not think that it is in fact very audacious to write a Violin Concerto?’ Determined to do the best job he could, and already in touch with several noted violin virtuosi of the day, Bruch organised a run-through with a fine local violinist in Koblenz (where he had recently taken up the job of music director) before sending the manuscript to the renowned soloist Joseph Joachim for his advice. Joachim was one of Johannes Brahms’s closest friends and would eventually premiere Brahms’s own Violin Concerto in 1879. In the meantime, he had already written two of his own – including the so-called ‘Hungarian Concerto’ (Joachim had been born in Hungary) in 1857.

Joachim wrote Bruch a long, detailed and fulsome reply, pointing to specific phrases and articulations that he considered needed adjusting, and making remarks – and offering solutions – as to the structure and drama of the whole. He was warmly enthusiastic and asked if he might be allowed to learn the solo part once the work was complete so that he could perform it. Bruch was sufficiently grateful that he visited Joachim to thank him in person; but his own remaining doubts also prompted him to send the work to yet another performer, Ferdinand David, who had been the dedicatee Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto twenty years earlier. Ultimately Bruch juggled Joachim’s suggestions with David’s, but spent the next few decades denying that he had received much help from either, clearly worried that his need to seek further advice might look like creative weakness on his part. The piece was finally premiered on 7 January 1868 by Joseph Joachim to resoundingly positive reviews, and within months Joachim had given further performances at several German cities. Other noteworthy violinists including Leopold Auer, Ferdinand David and Henri Vieuxtemps were also quick to add the piece to their repertoire. Meanwhile, in January 1867, Bruch organised the score’s publication. But here, his youth and inexperience cost him, quite literally: he sold the rights entirely to the publishers August Cranz for just 250 thalers. Given the work’s enduring popularity, it could have made him a fortune over the remainder of his long life if he had known how to bargain more effectively.

Bruch had initially wondered whether his work would be best labelled ‘Fantasie’ rather than ‘Concerto’. Rather than three discrete movements, a ‘Vorspiel’, or ‘Prelude’, leads directly into a second movement without pause. Joachim dissuaded him from giving it this alternative label, and it makes for a distinctive concerto structure. In the Vorspiel, the violin unfurls long unaccompanied phrases between brief orchestral punctuations.  A brooding Allegro then begins, in which the soloist introduces a restless first theme in D minor and a sweetly lyrical contrasting idea in Bb major. The dramatic introduction eventually returns, prompting a brief cadenza before the music leads seamlessly into the achingly beautiful, deeply intimate slow movement – a movement which was often performed on its own, such was its popularity with audiences. The music comes to rest here, and the work is then rounded off with a sprightly, sunshiny Allegro energico finale stuffed with double-stopped chords for the soloist. It seems highly likely that the dance-like, Hungarian character of this movement was inspired by Joachim’s crucial role as creative advisor, advocate and interpreter.

Bruch’s concerto is followed here by a work completed over 150 years later. The Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür studied classical music in Tallinn before joining the prog rock group Spe in 1979. He spent five years heading Spe, which was one of the most popular Estonian bands of its time, before leaving to concentrate on composition, and has since written nine symphonies, ten instrumental concertos and a host of other chamber and stage works. He draws on a wide range of musical styles and idioms in his works, from Gregorian chant and post-modernist techniques to serialism and sound-fields.

Tüür’s Second Violin Concerto, completed in 2017, is entitled ‘Angel’s Share’. This term relates to whisky making: when whisky is placed into wooden barrels to age, the wood absorbs certain chemicals from the liquor and imbues it with the barrel’s own woody flavour. A small amount of the whisky also evaporates over the years of its maturation, because of the porous nature of wood – and the vanishing quantity is known as the angel’s share. This celestial sacrifice, it is reasoned, is the price that must be paid to give the finished product its rounded, smooth taste and remove any traces of hard-edged bitterness. Tüür muses that this same process can be applied to human beings: that maturity, over time, can lead to an ‘angel’s share’ being taken from us to deepen our sense of goodness and hope, and save us from resentment and cynicism.

The music is, to this end, full of moments in which time itself seems to be held in suspension. A single tone from the violin, matched with ringing crotales, opens the piece, which pairs a string orchestra with a clutch of percussion instruments (vibraphone and bass drum, tam-tam, crotales and temple blocks). Pitches slide up and down strings; the orchestra throws the same brief ideas across ensemble sections; harmonics whistle past. Passages of emphatic, rhythmic restlessness are stopped in their tracks by sonorous chords from the vibraphone, and the double basses rest for bars at a time on a single pitch as the strings tiptoe in the tiniest intervals above them. In the last five minutes, the music picks up a more sustainable groove, temple blocks and plucked strings driving the music forwards. But even this is ultimately interrupted, the string fading away until a final vibraphone chord is left shimmering in the silence. ‘Angel’s Share’ was premiered in Tallinn on 3 May 2018 by violinist Hugo Ticciati and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Risto Joost.

© Katy Hamilton