Giuseppe TARTINI
Concerto pour violon en ré majeur
Eduard MELKUS
Capella Academica
August WENZINGER
11-14 février 1966, Studio Wien-Film, Rosenhügel, Wien
Giuseppe Tartini a laissé près de 130 concertos pour violon, et il est difficile de s'y retrouver... En ré majeur, il y en a près de deux douzaines: je n'ai pas encore pu déterminer de quel concerto il s'agit exactement, dans la nomenclature actuelle - en supposant que la partition utilisée par Eduard Melkus et August Wenzinger a été publiée?! Si une personne visitant cette page en sait plus, toutes infos m'intéressent -> COURIEL!
Quelques très intéressantes précisions sur ce concerto, citées des notes d'Eduard Melkus publiées au verso de la pochette du disque:
"[...]
The violinist of today is strongly attracted to early music. For one thing the technical and tonal challenge is fascinating, as he attempts to revive the ancient technique of playing a short-necked violin with an old-style bow, which has its own interpretative characteristics, and for another thing early music pre-supposes improvisatory ability in the performers, not only in the realization of the accompaniment from the figured bass, but to a far greater degree in the fashioning of the melodic line. There are numerous theoretical examples illustrating the art of ornamentation as practised in earlier times, but it is far less common to discover complete works with all the ornamentation appertaining to them, and to be able to bring them to performance. The source material is often scattered throughout the world, and assembling it requires an immense amount of patient labour. The present recording is a living example of this.
Both Tartini and Nardini were praised especially by their contemporaries for their inspired playing of Adagios, by which is meant principally not the use of particular techniques of dynamics, tone colouration or vibrato, but the art of decorating the simple melodies of slow movements and giving them fresh nuances of meaning. In the works of both composers there are written out examples of how this principle was put into practice — the task was to locate them.
[...] Far more difficult was the task of reconstructing the Concerto in D major which, with its themes based on broken triads, probably belongs to Tartini’s last period of creative activity. Two authentic scores are in existence: one in the archives of the Capella S. Antoniana in Padua, the other in the library of the Paris Conservatoire.
This work, with its use of wind instruments and divided strings in the Padua score, seems to occupy a special place among Tartini’s many concertos. The Paris manuscript, however, contains only a straightforward string accompaniment in four parts. Closer inspection led to the surprising discovery that in the Padua score, where the divided string parts are always written in the same staves, two different versions of the accompaniment were clearly written above one another: the earlier handwriting gives the text of the Paris score note for note, while the later handwriting provides a richer accompaniment with the addition of wind instruments. The harmonics in this version are sometimes different, so the two versions cannot have been used simultaneously.
Evidently the later version with fuller string accompaniment together with wind instruments was simply entered into the score without the original version being eliminated. The revision was probably the work of Tartini’s pupil and successor at the Capella S. Antoniana, Meneghini, who is known to have made arrangements of other works by Tartini. In this version, incorporating a later "amplification" of the scoring, this Tartini Concerto is of especial interest. His Padua score also contains, as cadenza in the last movement, a capriccio twice as long as the one in the Paris version. Closer examination reveals the fact that it actually consists of two "capricci", one after the other; their musical content is practically the same, so that evidently only one of them should be chosen for performance, no ornamented version of the slow movement in existence until, thanks to a valuable suggestion from Mr. Allan Tyson and the kind assistance of M. A. Rosenthal in Oxford, obtained from Berkeley University, California, where it forms part of a collection of 18th century Italian manuscripts in the University’s possession. [...]"
Ce disque fut enregistré dans des sessions s'étalant du 11 au 14 février 1966, dans le «Studio Wien-Film», Rosenhügel, Wien, avec la «Capella Academica, Wien» (*) et Eduard MELKUS en soliste, le tout sous la direction de August WENZINGER.
[*] Sur l'impulsion de Josef Mertin, Eduard Melkus fonda en 1952, avec Gustav Leonhardt et Karl Scheit, la «Schola Antiqua Wien», qui devint en 1965 la «Capella Academica Wien», qu'il dirige aujourd'hui encore - décembre 2020 - malgré son âge respectable - 92 ans le 1er septembre passé!
Quelques précisions sur les instruments, toujours citées du texte d'Eduard Melkus publié au verso de la pochette du disque:
"[...] The "Capella Academica" plays valuable Italian and German instruments belonging to the Akademie für Musik in Vienna. They correspond to 18th century principles of construction with their short necks, thinner bass bars an differently shaped bridges; these instruments are played with bows of corresponding design, which are held in the Italian manner, above the nut. The wind instruments, too, are originals, the horns belonging to the Haydn Orchestra in Eisenstadt and kindly lent by the Provincial Government of the Burgenland; the oboe, which is the property of H. G. Stradner, was made by A. Grenser (1720— 1807).
The concert pitch adopted in Vienna in former times seems to have been higher than in other musical centres — as it is today — so that it almost corresponded to our modern pitch. This fact is proved by a number of wind instruments of the period which have come down to us with two tuning pieces of different lengths, the shorter of which enables the instrument to play at almost exactly the present-day pitch. The instruments of the Capella Academica are therefore tuned to A = 440. [...]"
Eduard MELKUS, un portrait fait par Andy BERNHAUT, Wien, pour Archiv Produktion
Voici donc...
Giuseppe Tartini, Concerto pour violon en ré majeur, Eduard Melkus, Capella Academica, Wien, August Wenzinger, 11-14 février 1966, Studio Wien-Film, Rosenhügel, Wien
1. Allegro - Intermezzo 04:28 (-> 04:28)