This cadenza is one of the improvised ones, played by Vladimir Spivakov. It starts at the end of the first movement of the concerto, 8 bars before the end of the piece. The last chord the orchestra plays is D-major. The cadenza lasts for roughly 45 seconds.
Within the cadenza Spivakov often mainly worked with double used motives and movements going up and down. As far as I am able to tell he also always used themes that were played within the rest of the concerto. He starts with playing the same motif 3 times always starting on a lower note. Followed by an arpeggio going upwards and a scale going down. One motif, near at the end, in which Spivakov uses skips of fourths, is played twice, once loud and with rather detached, strong notes and the repetition soft an quietly. He ends with going up another scale until he lets the orchestra know, by playing a short thriller on e, that they should continue playing the last 8 bars of the first movement.
This was the very first cadenza I deliberately listened to, I was surprised by the effect of the orchestra suddenly stopping. This created a sound character that created tentions throughout the whole cadenza, as if all the other instruments were holding their breath. This “tention” was only abrogated when the orchestra started plying again. It wasn’t easy for me to follow what exactly Spivakov was doing with the motifs of the first movement, but I found that the most memorable motif from the cadenza was this repetitive theme with the skips of fourths.
It took me a little while to find the cadenza itself, due to it not being specifically marked as such, I knew though, that it would either be at the end of the first or third movement of the piece and eventually found it, where all the other instruments have a fermata-sign on top of a break. Overall I enjoyed not only listening to the cadenza, but the whole concerto.
Dianas Learning Log 