Recently a dear friend sent me a recording of Johannes Brahms' Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major, Op. 78, made by the German violinist Isabelle Faust and Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov. It is a lovely, introspective performance of the sweet "Rain" sonata, so nicknamed because it sets melodic ideas that Brahms also used in his Regenlied (Rainsong), Op. 59. Yet there are fiery moments too. Both musicians are wonderful, but I was especially interested in the violin playing. Ms. Faust is not only a world-class artist who plays both modern and period violins, but a musical thinker who devotes herself to extensive research in advance of her performances, studying all the historical sources she can find for every work she plays, whether those be autograph manuscripts, early editions, or letters.
In a 2013 review for The Guardian, Anna Picard beautifully described Ms. Faust's sound—not in this recording but in other performances by the violinist—as possessing "stillness of focus and purity of sound". In the Brahms Op. 78 recording, I was astounded and delighted by subtle variations in timbre, or sound color, resulting from the violinist's sensitive and carefully chosen use of vibrato. Brahms' sonata received its premiere performance in 1879; we know from the great violin teacher Carl Flesch's discussion of the technique that continuous vibrato was not yet in general practice even in the early 1900s (from the seventeenth century well into the nineteenth, it had been considered an ornament). Writing in the 1920s and 1930s, Mr. Flesch says of the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe's vibrato that it "followed closely every mood of his admirable personality", but that it was Fritz Kreisler who "started a revolutionary change in this regard, by vibrating not only continuously in cantilenas [melodic lines] like Ysaÿe, but even in technical passages." Therefore Ms. Faust's decision not to use vibrato continuously in the earlier Brahms sonata seems just right.
What for me was a revelation was Ms. Faust's playing of double-stops or even complete chords with straight, vibrato-less tone. I realized suddenly that double-stops or chords when left to themselves—not enhanced by any tone-warming technique—provide not only harmony as we all know and expect, but special colors of their own. They widen the sound-universe. I invite you to listen for these magical moments in Ms. Faust's and Mr. Melnikov's recording. They occur, for example, in the first movement at 1:04 and 4:01. There are wonderful contrasts between vibrated single notes at 1:51 and plain ones at 1:59, and notice the unadorned rising scale starting at 3:01. The movement’s stunning conclusion is without vibrato, from 9:59. In the second movement, hear the passage from 13:41 to 14:46! These are but a few of the colors in Ms. Faust's subtle and varied palette.
[Carl Flesch's words, from a translation of his monumental work, The Art of Violin Playing (originally in German, published in two volumes in Berlin from 1923 to 1939) are as translated and quoted in Performance Practice Vol. II: Music After 1600, ed. Howard Mayer Brown and Stanley Sadie (Norton/Grove Handbooks in Music, 1989), p. 461. Ms. Faust's and Mr. Melnikov's recording of the Op. 78 sonata was originally released in 2008 and again in 2016 by Harmonia Mundi. Both play period instruments in this performance, which also includes the Brahms Horn Trio, Op. 40 with Teunis van der Zwart, horn.]
Photo by Alexandra Eddy
