Дуэт для 2 скрипок A-dur, WoO 34

Посв. Alexandre Boucher (франц. скрипач, 1778-1861), 1822

Lukas Hagen, скрипка
Rainer Schmidt, скрипка

From about 1820 French violinist Alexandre Boucher travelled through Europe. His talent as a violinist was acknowledged, but he was regarded as a musical charlatan. The violinist and composer Louis Spohr met him in Brussels in 1819; he wrote: "His face bore a remarkable likeness to Napoleon Bonaparte's, and he had evidently carefully studied the banished emperor's way of bearing himself, lifting his hat, taking 'snuff,' etc..... He played a Haydn quartet, but he added so many ornaments of bad taste, that it was impossible to derive any pleasure from it."

Boucher encouraged the idea that he was exiled from France because his likeness to Napoleon might arouse sympathies for the former emperor.

In 1821 the composer Carl Maria von Weber conducted a concert in Berlin, in which Boucher was a performer, playing Weber's Variations on a Norwegian Air, to which he added his own cadenza:

At a wave from Boucher, Weber stopped; and he and the astounded public suddenly heard tremolandos, pizzicatos and other coarser tricks... then a whole firework display.... Finally, after highly extravagant modulations, arpeggios and other pieces of tightrope walking, the good fellow lost his balance completely and could find no way of getting back to the original piece – so, as if inspired from above, he dropped his violin and leapt upon the stupified, half irritated, half amused Weber, embraced him in front of everyone and shouted with a loud voice, as if choked with tears, "Ah grand maître! que j'aime, que j'admire!".1

In April 1822 he visited Ludwig van Beethoven; at the occasion, the composer wrote for Boucher a piece for two violins (WoO 34 in the Kinsky–Halm Catalogue).2

  • 1. John Warrack, Carl Maria von Weber (2nd edition 1976, Cambridge University Press)
  • 2. Paul Nettl. "Bouché, Alexandre" in Beethoven Encyclopedia. Philosophical Library, New York, 1956.