Violin Concerto

On July 30th 1838, Felix Mendelssohn wrote to his friend, the distinguished German violinist Ferdinand David, "I'd like to write a violin concerto for you next winter; one in E minor sticks in my head, the beginning of which will not leave me in peace." Sketches begun in 1838 confirm that Mendelssohn knew very early on how this music would go: an extensive correspondence with David, spanning six years, shows how much care went into the details. With Mendelssohn as the architect and David as his technical adviser, the concerto was first performed in 1845 with David as the soloist with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Danish composer Niels Gade. Mendelssohn and David were both celebrated prodigies born only a year apart. They became friends in 1825, the year Ferdinand David, fifteen, gave his first concerts in Berlin, and Felix Mendelssohn, sixteen, composed his wonderful Octet for strings. That summer, after Mendelssohn's father Abraham moved his family to Berlin, the two young men became regular chamber music partners. The son of the famous philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham declared "First I was the son of my father. Now I am the father of my son.”

The concerto was an immediate success and has remained an essential part of any violin soloist's repertoire ever since. The great violinist Heifitz has said that the Mendelssohn Concerto "is always retired at the end of one concert season and revived at the beginning of the next". The reason is simple: here is a work which gives the soloist a flow of beautiful ideas together with an astonishing display of technical virtuosity and the listener is rewarded with melodies that caress the ear and linger affectionately in the memory.

Although Mendelssohn is not regarded as a musical innovator, the Violin Concerto has many original ideas. From the start, the traditional orchestral statement of the music's themes is discarded with the soloist entering with an outpouring of expressive lyricism after the briefest of orchestral introductions. The cadenza, normally placed just before the end of a movement, occurs much earlier allowing the soloist to lead the music back into its opening key and seamlessly reintroducing the orchestra. There is a magical transition from the first to the second movement: a solo bassoon sustains the last note of the first movement and the entry of the flute followed by the strings in turn creates the simple prelude to one of the most famous of classical music's melodies. The profundity of this simple music is impressive as is the skill with which the composer transforms the reflective music into the stunningly virtuosic and exuberant finale.