When I was a young teenager, there would always be a few days each summer where my parents drove to western Massachusetts to attend concerts at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. We would have a family picnic on the lawn and then we would hear some of the world's best classical musicians perform live, which is a good way to fall in love with classical music.
We went to a number of BSO performances (one of those concerts was the first place I heard the Dvorak violin concerto, though I can't remember who was playing). But the performance that stands out in my memory was a chamber music concert. One year, my family and I were in the audience when the violinist Christian Tetzlaff and pianist Lars Vogt played an all-Brahms programme. It was one of those magical performances where time stops and everything but music ceases to matter. It made such a deep impression on me that I was saddened to see Lars Vogt's obituary in the New York Times earlier this year.
Two weeks before he died, Vogt played Brahms' first violin sonata with Tetzlaff, on an electric piano in his hospital room. In a beautiful tribute to his friend and collaborator, Tetzlaff said,
For both of us, Brahms felt so close. He was there in moments of deep emotion. Maybe because he doesn’t seem as superhuman as some other composers, or as addicted to desperation, but instead—to quote his requiem—says, “I will console you, as one is consoled by a mother.” It’s something that resonates even in the darker Brahms works. He isn’t trying to be bigger than us; he wants to be with us. Brahms is the composer who connected Lars and I the most all these years and who allowed us to say goodbye in such a beautiful way.
Tetzlaff and Vogt recorded the Brahms violin sonatas in 2016, and their label has released the recordings on Youtube. Here they are, playing that first violin sonata.
The first movement, vivace ma non troppo (lively but not too much)
The second movement, adagio (slow)
The third movement--allegro molto moderato (very moderately fast)
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