Jean-Marie Leclair (the Elder): Violin Concerto in D major op. 10 No. 3
Jean-Marie Leclair (The Elder)
born 10 May 1697 in Lyon,
died 22 Oct. 1764 in Paris
Printed and published:
ca. 1745
CD recordings:
Simon Standage 1995
Leila Schayegh 2019
Théotime Langlois de Swarte 2021
Jean-Marie Leclair (l'aîné), one of the most famous French Baroque composers and violinists of his time, is closely associated with the Italian development of violin playing. Although he first performed as a dancer in Lyon, he then decided to perfect his violin playing in Turin with Corelli's pupil Giovanni Battista Somis. In 1728, he performed there for the first time during Holy Week at the famous Concerts Spirituels and became one of the most famous European violin virtuosos of his time. From there he travelled throughout Europe, especially to Holland. It is likely that Leclair also exchanged violin techniques with Locatelli there, although there is no evidence of the well-known violin duel story from Kassel, which pitted Leclair against Locatelli. In a chronicle by an organist from Groningen, Jacob Wilhelm Lustig, it says: "Both violinists would chase the violin up and down like rabbits, but one would play like an angel, the other like a devil. The first, Leclair, with his flawless, sweet tone, knew how to steal hearts, while the second, Locatelli, essentially showed off his violin technique and tried to surprise his listeners with his scratchy playing."
There is no evidence that Leclair was ever in Kassel. However, the fact that Leclair's violin concertos can steal hearts has its own truth, which only those who listen to his violin sonatas
and violin concertos with an open mind can realise. What is to be gained from this cannot be described with etiquettes such as "French" or "dance-like" or "mixed style" or "renouncing virtuosity
in favour of expressiveness". Music has its own communicative logic.
Listen to it here!
Listening companion:
I. Allegro moderato
Three chords are placed at the beginning like a threefold knocking, which are repeated immediately after briefly running away and running out and become the decisive motif of this movement.
However, the ritornello, which began so strictly, then liquefies into syncopated, flowing movements that lead to a dance-like final ascent and a marked final cadence of the ritornello.
In the first solo section, the motif appears in three striking solo double stops of the concertante violin and is immediately replaced by a wild D major triplet run. However, the motif is
immediately interspersed again in three double stops before the solo violin reaches out into the expanses in harmonically vagrant sixteenth-note runs.
But the knocking motif in the dominant calls back to the ritornello three times, and the syncopated flow and dance-like ascent follow until the orchestra's final cadence makes room for the
violin's second solo part.
This new solo section begins, like the first, with the double-stopping triple motif, but then varies it and intertwines it in runs and figurations until the motif is forgotten and the figures
dissolve completely into expanses and lead up to the highest heights and violin sounds.
Time for the ritornello to intervene again! With some harmonic effort, the orchestra brings the violin back to its usual motif. The violin, however, finally embarks on free virtuoso
ornamentation, as if it had forgotten the triple motif and as if it wanted to freely realise itself in the last solo part. After a brief adagio interlude, it then sings its way expressively and
eloquently to the end, whereby the orchestra's ritornello is given its formal right and thus, without insisting on the triple motif, forms the conclusion.
II. Andante
What follows could really "steal your heart". Even the wonderful beginning - 3 introductory quavers with a soft accompaniment, then a quaver upbeat, followed by 2 quavers each with upbeats, which become a dreamlike melody - can take your breath away. And how the melody develops sequence by sequence. In fact, you can only follow this violin song inwardly, listening to every ornament and every twist and turn. Fortunately, part 1 and part 2 of this "endless" singing are repeated, so that you can listen and listen for more than 5 minutes, always with an open heart.
III: Allegro ma non troppo
After this glimpse into other spheres, the introductory ritornello of the last movement brings us back to an orderly dance in 9/8 time, just as the "angels" and French court society danced at the
time. It begins in an orderly fashion, twice up and twice down, and again twice up and again down and onwards in a lively triple metre, all of which is quite captivating and imaginatively kept in
rhythmic tension by the counter-movements of the bass voices.
As the momentum levels out to a sonorous D, the solo of the lead dancer, alias the solo violin, begins. It also goes up and down twice, but an octave higher, after which the violin floats away,
dances relentlessly forward in triplets and escalates into sonorous figurations.
Interrupted by the second ritornello of the string orchestra and its drive up and down and its syncopations, the second solo of the violin then takes the lead once again and increases the height
and virtuosity of the sound. The solo violin plunges full of energy into the turns of the triple metre, intensifies the virtuosity once again and drives the flow of sound forward ever more
intensely, then stops for a moment and offers up all the double-stopping possibilities in order to advance to a kind of cadenza and lead into the third orchestral ritornello.
The orchestra is once again swept along and resonates once more. But it still needs a final solo from the violin, which storms off resolutely in 16th-note movements and 32nd-note runs, increases
the energy once again and soars to the highest heights before the final ritornello enters and allows the dance to swing out in an oscillating, solemn D major. What lingers, however, because it
went to the heart, is the memory of this spherically beautiful long moment between the two fast, skilfully virtuoso concerto movements before and after.