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Photo Credit: Felix Broede

Photo Credit: Lauren Hurt

Photo Credit: Marco Borggreve

Brahms Double Concerto

Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Orchestral Series
Saturday, June 21, 2025 at 6pm Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater
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A night of breathtaking artistry awaits as world-renowned cellist Alisa Weilerstein joins rising-star violinist Blake Pouliot in Brahms' profound Double Concerto. Conductor Matthias Pintscher leads a program that also includes Schubert’s youthful Fourth Symphony, the "Tragic”. 

LAWN SCREEN: Bravo! Vail is pleased to offer the lawn screen experience at this evening's concert.

Featured Artists

Matthias Pintscher

conductor

Blake Pouliot

violin

Alisa Weilerstein

cello

Program Highlights

Matthias Pintscher, conductor
Blake Pouliot, violin
Alisa Weilerstein, cello

BRAHMS Double Concerto for Violin and Cello
SCHUBERT Symphony No. 4, Tragic

Pre-Concert Talk Speaker: Leah Frederick (University of Colorado, Boulder)
5:10 PM | Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater Lobby


All artists, programs, and pricing subject to change.

Program Notes

Concerto in A minor for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra, Op. 102 (1887)

(31 minutes)

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833 - 97)

Concerto in A minor for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra, Op. 102
     Allegro
     Andante 
     Vivace non troppo

Johannes Brahms wrote four concertos, completing his Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1858 (following a long gestation), his Violin Concerto in 1878-79, his Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1878-81, and his Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra (often referred to as the Double Concerto) in 1887. While laboring on these works, he typically shared his progress with few people beyond his most intimate circle, and in some cases only with his two closest confidants, pianist Clara Schumann (Robert’s widow) and violinist Joseph Joachim.

Brahms and Joachim had been friends since 1853, and it was actually a letter of introduction from Joachim that helped open the Schumanns’ door to the young Brahms. Joachim championed many of Brahms’ solo and chamber works over the years, and for three decades he served as a devoted sounding-post for the occasionally insecure composer. But in 1884 their friendship entered perilous straits. Since 1863, Joachim had been married to a singer, Amalie Schneeweiss, and although she gave him no reason to be suspicious of her fidelity, he got it into his mind that she was having an affair with Brahms’ publisher, Fritz Simrock. An ugly business ensued, leading to divorce court and a trial in which a judge needed to rule on Amalie’s guilt or innocence. Among the testimony produced was a sympathetic letter Brahms had written to Amalie to affirm his friendship during this stressful time, and that letter played a key role in swinging the judgment in favor of Amalie’s innocence. Joachim was infuriated and, feeling that Brahms had betrayed him, he broke off all contact with his longtime friend.

For more than three years Joachim resisted Brahms’ attempts at reconciliation. He continued to play Brahms’ music but would have nothing to do with him personally. In the summer of 1887, Brahms tried to bridge the chasm by offering Joachim another concerto—not a solo violin concerto this time, but instead this double concerto, with a cellist serving as a buffer between the violinist and composer. He wrote to Joachim that the most important thing to him, more important than the concerto itself, was that Joachim should respond warmly to the piece, but that if he was not inclined to accept this offering he needed only jot the words “I decline” on a postcard and send it to Brahms. Joachim could resist no further and soon he was swept up in the familiar process of weighing and testing a Brahms masterpiecein- progress, sharing his opinion on technical questions. Thus was rebuilt a friendship that would henceforth be at least cordial, even if it could never achieve the sort of artistic intimacy of its first 30 years.

INTERMISSION

Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Tragic, D. 417 (1816)

(28 minutes)

FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797-1828)

Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Tragic, D. 417
     Adagio molto—Allegro vivace
     Andante
     Menuetto: Allegro vivace—Trio
     Allegro

Franz Schubert celebrated his 19th birthday shortly before he embarked on his Fourth Symphony. He had begun to hit his stride as a composer, but composing was not yet his profession, strictly speaking; he unhappily endured his working hours as “sixth assistant teacher” in his father’s school in Vienna, where his responsibilities focused on educating and disciplining the youngest pupils. He disliked the teaching profession and in autumn 1816 he left it in favor of a financially perilous existence as a freelance composer.

Many of his pieces were unveiled in at-home musicales. These had begun in about 1814 as Sunday-afternoon family string-quartet sessions at the Schubert home in which the composer’s older brothers played violins, he played viola, and his father took the cello part. Friends started sitting in, and by autumn 1815 the group had progressed from a mostly amateur assemblage to include a number of professional players. Its somewhat steady membership swelled to include seven first violins, six second violins, three violas, three cellos, and two double basses, plus whatever wind instruments could be brought in, and as the group expanded it moved from the Schuberts’ living room to larger venues. The ensemble stayed together for about three years, eventually performing for themselves and a small audience at the apartment of the concertmaster, Otto Hatwig, a Bohemian-born violinist in the Burg Theatre orchestra and a composer of modest talent. The ensemble was accomplished enough to tackle the more difficult symphonies of Haydn and Mozart, and it gave Schubert almost all the opportunities he would ever have to hear his symphonic music played by an actual orchestra. We know for sure that three of his symphonies received their first performances from this group, which possibly may have served as midwife for his first six.

Schubert was drawing inspiration from Haydn and Mozart—perhaps a bit from Beethoven’s stormy C-minor compositions, too—when he wrote his C-minor Symphony, and specifically from their works in the Sturm und Drang tradition. He cited Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, a pinnacle of that style, as one of his favorite pieces, and we may hear echoes of that work’s emotional terrain in this symphony, which strikes a far more personal tone than Schubert’s three prior efforts. The nicknames attached to symphonies are usually appended after-the-fact by persons other than the composer. Schubert’s Symphony No. 4 is an exception; the sobriquet Tragic was his own. It stands on the first page of the manuscript, inscribed in his hand, although scholars believe that he added it to the autograph score at some later date. The piece hardly seems what most people would consider tragic: no Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique here.

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