An Unknown Beethoven Cadenza by Joseph Joachim: “Dublin 1852”

With his sensational London performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Op. 61, under Mendelssohn’s baton on May 27, 1844,* the musical destiny of the twelve-year-old Joseph Joachim was preordained. Later in the century, he came to embody that concerto and its instrumental aesthetic as few musicians have, before or since. Mendelssohn’s prot eg e—he referred to the violinist variously as “Hungarian boy,” “Posaunen Engel,” and “Teufelsbraten”—achieved this tumultuous success despite performing a concerto that was still relatively unknown, and indeed not viewed as particularly violinistic. One critic for the Musical World allegedly commented: “So well did he play, that we forgot how entirely unadapted for display was the violin part.” But he also tells us how decidedly virtuosic Joachim’s cadenzas were, and that they were interrupted by applause: “the two cadenzas introduced by the young player were not only tremendous executive feats, but ingeniously composed—consisting wholly of excellent and musician-like workings of phrases and passages from the concerto.” Another reviewer went even further, comparing Joachim’s cadenzas to Paganini: “The boy Joachim, from thirteen to fourteen years old [sic]. . . For Joachim is not only an experienced concerto-player—he played the whole of Beethoven’s Concerto from memory, with the utmost self-possession—but a composer. The Paganinian cadences [cadenzas] he produced were of a first-rate description, and are said to be his own.” For some time, scholars and musicians have been keen to learn more about the scope and contents of Joachim’s early cadenzas. However, most details remain buried in the past. Although several album leaves afford us glimpses on the ones played at the 1844 concert, the earliest published cadenzas—one for each movement—date from later, from 1853, and were released by the Viennese publisher Haslinger. As Table 1 shows, Joachim would publish his cadenzas again later in life, in 1894, this time with Schlesinger in Berlin, and now he included two sets. One set differed significantly from the early publication and is