Pierre Rode: Violin Concerto No.1 in D Minor, Op.3, Friedemann Eichhorn (violin)

Pierre Rode - Violin Concerto No.1 in D Minor, Op.3, Friedemann Eichhorn (violin), Jena Philharmonic Orchestra, Nicolás Pasquet (conductor) I. Maestoso – 00:00 II. Adagio – 16:05 III. Polonaise – 22:43 Jacques Pierre Joseph Rode (16 February 1774 – 25 November 1830) was a French violinist and composer. Rode was born in Bordeaux on 16th February, 1774. The son of a perfumer, he showed early musical precocity and was taken to Paris at the age of thirteen by his teacher, Flauvel. Rode became the star pupil of Giovanni Batista Viotti, the foremost violinist of the day and the founder of the modern French violin school. In 1790 he made his solo debut in Viotti’s Violin Concerto No. 13; he also joined the orchestra at the Theatre de Monsieur, where he met his longtime colleague Pierre Baillot. He also joined the violin department of the newly organized Paris Conservatoire. There he collaborated with Baillot and Kreutzer on a manual of instruction for the violin. Rode composed almost exclusively for his own instrument. His works include sonatas, quartets, airs variés, thirteen violin concertos, various miscellaneous works, and pedagogical works, most notably the 24 Caprices in the Form of Etudes. Rode’s works represent the full flowering of the French violin school that traced its origin to Viotti’s arrival in Paris in 1782. Rode’s greatest contribution to the violinist’s art (along with the 24 Caprices), was his thirteen violin concertos. Roeder, in his History of the Concerto, described Rode’s concertos as “technically somewhat more demanding of the soloist than those of Viotti, while displaying a thorough idiomatic understanding of the instrument”. Rode, and the French School generally, had a wide influence on the romantic sensibility of the nineteenth century. As Boris Schwarz has shown, also influenced Beethoven when he came to write his own violin concerto. Boris Schwarz called Rode’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D minor “a remarkably mature work”, and continued: “Though his handling of form became more concentrated, his expression more supple, his technique more finished, he remained unchanged in the fundamental aspects of his musical personality, and later progress seems small compared to his astonishing Opus 1.” This concerto, along with Concerto No. 7 in A minor, was one of the very few works (besides his own) that Paganini consented to play. The concerto no. 1 is dedicated to his mentor, “Citizen” Viotti. (from review by Bruce R. Schueneman to Naxos album)