Klughardt Violin Concerto in D Major, Op.

68 - Program Notes

August Friedrich Martin Klughardt was born in Kothen, Germany, in 1847. He showed much musical
talent at an early age, and was both composing and performing as a pianist by his mid-teens. In 1863
his family moved to Dessau, where he would later spend the last twenty years of his life as Director of
Music for the Dessau court.
Klughardt worked as a conductor and music director in many German cities including Posen,
Neustrelitz and Lubeck. From 1869 to 1873 he worked at the court theater in Weimar, where he became
friends with Franz Liszt. In 1873 he met Richard Wagner; Klughardt attended the first Bayreuth
festival, and in 1892-3 he conducted Wagner's Ring cycle in Dessau. Klughardt also enjoyed a
cordial professional relationship with Brahms' favorite violinist Joseph Joachim, whose quartet
premiered both of Klughardt's string quartets and to whom Klughardt dedicated his Piano Quintet.
Stylistically, Klughardt's music draws on both the Liszt/Wagner school and the Brahms/Schumann
tradition; much of his harmonic language is clearly influenced by Liszt, but his forms and structural
elements generally follow the traditions of Beethoven and his fellow classicists.
The Violin Concerto was written and published in 1895. It was very well received and performed
throughout Europe by several violinists. Friedrich Seitz, the concertmaster of the Dessau orchestra,
performed the premiere; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra concertmaster Karl Prill performed the
concerto in Berlin, Frankfurt and Prague, and the French violinist Joseph Debroux is said to have
performed it from Paris to St. Petersburg. However, the concerto has not remained in the standard
repertoire for violinists, and these performances will be its US premiere.
The concerto is in three movements, with an accompanied cadenza forming a bridge between the first
and second movements. This Lisztian dramatic recitative section highlights a motive that Klughardt
uses in each movement of the work, a rhythmic cell that is sometimes referred to as the Fate-motive this rhythm appears near the end of Wagner's Gotterdammerung, the last opera in the Ring cycle. The
first movement is written in classical sonata form, and introduces the Wagnerian motive quietly at the
end of the exposition. The beautiful second movement is reminiscent of the slow movement of the
Bruch violin concerto, as is the linking of the first and second movements, and the third movement has
a joyous German country dance feel. The whole piece is very integrated between soloist and orchestra;
rather than the common impression of an orchestra backing up a soloist, this concerto presents a
delightful and inventive conversation between violin and orchestra.