Double Bass Concerto

Composition and premiere: Koussevitzky began the concerto in 1902 and completed it in 1905. He was soloist in the premiere with the Moscow Philharmonic on February 12, 1905. BSO and Tanglewood performances: Koussevitzky introduced his concerto to Boston in a non-BSO Symphony Hall charity recital with piano accompaniment in October 1927. Ludwig Alexander Juht, later a member of the BSO, was soloist in the first BSO performance, Koussevitzky conducting, a single performance that raised $17,500 for the “Boston Emergency Campaign” community relief organization on April 11, 1934. Arthur Fiedler led the concerto with the Boston Pops and BSO double bassist Georges Moleux in July 1943. First BSO Tanglewood performance: July 26, 2024, BSO Principal Double Bass Edwin Barker, soloist, Andris Nelsons, conductor. 

Given the abundance of Serge Koussevitzky’s talents (as double bass virtuoso, conductor, publisher, pedagogue, impresario, champion of new music, diplomat), that he was also a composer is often forgotten. True, he did not write a large body of music, and what he wrote was created mostly in his early years for his beloved ugly duckling instrument, the double bass—not usually a glamor instrument but one essential to the functioning of a symphony orchestra. In the first decade of the 20th century, Koussevitzky became a highly successful touring double bass virtuoso, and his primary goal was to expand its limited solo repertoire. Composing also helped him to understand music “from the inside,” a useful skill as he worked to advance his career as a conductor. 

Before he left the Russian provinces for the bright lights of Moscow in 1891 at age 17 to make his name in music, Koussevitzky was already an accomplished cellist. When he sought admission to the School of the Moscow Philharmonic Society, he was told he could receive a full scholarship if he chose to study either the trombone or double bass, both shunned by most students. So Koussevitzky happily took up the double bass, which became his ticket into the world of professional music. With the passion and total commitment that he brought to any challenge, he mastered the instrument and used it to rise through the ranks, from first chair double bassist at the Bolshoi Theatre to acclaimed soloist. “An artistic temperament and ambition drove him to it, in order to make this instrument—harsh and primitive according to general opinion—of equal importance with the violin or the cello,” wrote composer Arthur Lourié (1892-1966), Koussevitzky’s friend and biographer. 

Lourié also described his style on the instrument. “Koussevitzky’s playing, in comparison with his predecessors’, was modernized; he toned down and really transformed the typical sonority of the orchestral bass, approximating it to that of the cello.”  Koussevitzky often played compositions by the two most famous double-bassists, Italians Domenico Dragonetti (1763-1846) and Giovanni Bottesini (1821-1889), along with arrangements of compositions by Mozart, Handel, and others. 

Before completing the concerto, Koussevitzky wrote several salon pieces for solo double bass: Andante, Opus 1; Valse miniature, Opus 2; Chanson triste, Opus 4, and Humoresque. The most ambitious of his compositions, the concerto was planned in 1902 but only finished in 1905. Its completion coincided with his marriage to his second wife, Natalia Konstantinovna Ushkova (1880-1942), daughter of a wealthy tea merchant and philanthropist, to whom the concerto is dedicated. Her enormous fortune gave Koussevitzky complete financial independence and helped him realize his ambitious plans for decades to come. Until Natalia’s death, she and Serge were the center of social life at Tanglewood, where they maintained the gracious hilltop estate they called Seranak, combining their two first names: Serge and Natalie. 

In musical style, the concerto draws heavily upon the late romantic legacy of Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1841-1893) and Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). In three movements in classic fast-slow-fast order, it unfolds quickly and simply, without a pause between the first two movements (Allegro and Andante). Instead of the tuning used for double basses in the orchestra (E-A-D-G), the score specifies that the strings are to be tuned one step higher (so-called “soloist tuning,” F-sharp-B-E-A). In his performances, Koussevitzky used an instrument slightly smaller than the usual orchestral one. His favorite instrument (once thought to have been made by the celebrated 17th-century luthier Nicolò Amati) is played in the July 26, 2024, performance by BSO Principal Double Bass Edwin Barker. This was essentially bequeathed to bassist Gary Karr by Koussevitzky’s third wife, Olga, and passed along by him for use by members of the International Society of Bassists, who have loaned it for the performance. 

An opening and insistently repeated six-note motif that stays close to the tonic F-sharp dominates the concerto, reminiscent of Rachmaninoff’s “motto” motifs. The solo part remains mostly in the instrument’s upper register, which projects better and lends itself to more lyrical expression. Following basic sonata form (theme, development, recapitulation), the first movement moves from the rhythmic main theme to a contrasting bel canto (i.e., like an operatic aria) subject, but also gives the soloist ample opportunity to show off with rapid sixteenth-note passages in double stops. The serene second movement develops a song-like pastoral melody that recalls Dvořák’s Cello Concerto (1894) and ends with a passage of glowing harmonic effects. In the energetic finale, Koussevitzky reworks the first movement’s themes, with bravura writing for the soloist. 

One of the legends that has long surrounded the Concerto, now a regular fixture of the solo double bass repertoire, is that it was composed either entirely or in large part by Reinhold Glière (1875-1956). This theory is believed to have originated with pugnacious musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, apparently in an attempt to “rile up” Koussevitzky, but has been strongly rejected by other reliable sources, including American composer David Diamond, who asserted that he hears “nothing of Glière’s style” in the Concerto. It is likely, however, that Koussevitzky sought professional advice from Glière, his one-time composition teacher and colleague. 

To some critical ears, Koussevitzky’s musical language was excessively sentimental. Composer Nikolai Medtner (1879-1951) praised his “splendid” performance of the concerto but called the piece itself “dilettantish.” But reviewing the 1905 premiere, Ivan Lipayev praised “the presence of spontaneous feeling and of a temperament which has a particularly contagious quality in the final movement.” When Koussevitzky performed the concerto in a Boston benefit recital (with piano accompaniment) in 1927, the often harsh Boston Herald critic Philip Hale called it “not a mere show piece for vain display: it is thoughtfully conceived, carefully written, without trivial details.” In 1929, Koussevitzky and pianist Pierre Luboshutz recorded the Andante movement for RCA Victor. 

HARLOW ROBINSON 

Harlow Robinson is an author, lecturer, and Matthews Distinguished University Professor of History, Emeritus, at Northeastern University. His books include Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography and Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians. He has contributed essays and reviews to the Boston Globe, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Symphony, Musical America, and Opera News, and program essays to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Aspen Music Festival, and Metropolitan Opera.