Beethoven: Concerto in D Major, Op. 61- I. Allegro ma non troppo
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Conducted by John Barbirolli
Cadenzas by Fritz Kreisler
“It is already deeply significant that Mozart’s violin concertos are a bit of a failure (at least measured against his high standards, and compared with his piano concertos) - no wonder his most popular piece for violin and concerto is his Sinfonia concertante, which is a strange kind of animal…
The reason for this probably lies in the fact, emphasized by Adorno, that the violin, much more than the piano, is the ultimate musical instrument and expression of subjectivity: a concerto for solo violin, with its interaction between violin and orchestra, thus provides perhaps the ultimate musical endeavor to express what German Idealism called the interaction between Subject and Substance; Mozart’s failure bears witness to the fact that his universe was not yet that of radical assertion of subjectivity, which occurred only with Beethoven. With Beethoven’s one violin concerto, however, he was accused, not unfairly, of accentuating the main melodic line in the first moment in an excessively repetitive way that borders on musical kitsch - in short, the balance between violin and orchestra, between Subject and Substance, is already disturbed by subjective excess.”
Slavoj Žižek: The Ticklish Subject
