A Viennese violin concerto: Franz Clement, Violin concerto in D major (1805), ed. Clive Brown, Recent Researches in the Music of the 19th and early 20th centuries, lxi (Middleton WI: A-R Editions, 2005), full score $112, piano and violin set $36

Abstract

Now here's something that will interest any admirer of the Beethoven Violin Concerto. Franz Clement (1780–1842), for whom Beethoven wrote his concerto in 1806, was Musikdirektor of the Theater an der Wien; the previous year, at the same concert at which he led the first public performance of the Eroica Symphony, he gave the première of his own D major concerto. This turns out to be a substantial piece, expertly composed and imaginatively orchestrated. For the work of such an unknown composer, it is remarkably good, and one is curious to find out more about Clement and his music. (His output includes sacred music, symphonies, chamber music and stage works, as well as solo violin music.) In his childhood he had toured as a prodigy, meeting Beethoven in Bonn, and appearing with Haydn in London in 1791. Spohr's autobiography recounts instances of Clement's amazing musical memory, and he had a long career as an orchestral leader and conductor, mainly in his native Vienna, but also in Prague, where he worked with Weber. In later life, however, he seems to have lost status: Beethoven revised his previously enthusiastic opinion, and some accounts suggest he had failed to fulfil his earlier promise. Clive Brown, in his excellent editor's introduction, puts forward the theory that Clement's playing—neat, accurate and pure in tone—began to seem increasingly old-fashioned in an age when violinists, inspired by Viotti and Spohr, valued a large, sustained tone and powerful expression above Clement's cool, classical virtues.