Jean Sibelius, Violin Concerto

 

The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius suffered from something similar to what today we would call "stage fright". His first instrument was the violin, and his early performances as a young man gave him hope of becoming a virtuoso on the instrument. He was not in the wrong direction, because at the age of twenty he had a technique that allowed him to tackle demanding works quite properly, let's say Mendelssohn's Concerto, among them.

But he had begun to study the instrument formally a little late ‒at the age of fifteen ‒ and, perhaps too aware of it, he showed before the public a certain nervousness that prevented him from handling the bow with the required ease. He had to give up his dream, a painful renunciation that would be compensated by the universal recognition of his work as a composer in his maturity.

Violin Concerto in D minor, Op 47

But the renunciation was not total. Before he was forty, the composer was able to transfer his intimate knowledge of the violin to a work born of his own creative imagination, the Concerto for violin and orchestra in D minor, completed in 1903. Conducted by Sibelius, the work was premiered in Helsinki on February 8, 1904, but failed to captivate the public, being received rather coldly.

Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957)

Somewhat surprised but not defeated, Sibelius withdrew the work from the stage to revise it. In October of the following year, Richard Strauss premiered a new, shorter version in Berlin. The public at large was not moved either. It was only in the thirties, after one of the most remarkable violinists of the twentieth century, the Lithuanian Jascha Heifetz recorded the work, that the concerto caught on with audiences thus becoming one of the most popular works of "nationalist" romanticism.

Maestro Sibelius once advised his pupils never to abuse the patience of the audience by writing long orchestral passages. In the revised version, Sibelius followed his own advice to the letter: the violinist begins the main theme four bars into the allegro and does not leave the center of the action for the entire half-hour of the concerto.

The rendition is by Korean American violinist Sarah Chang, accompanied by the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra of the Netherlands, conducted by Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden.

Movements:

Allegro Moderato / Adagio di molto - 17:23 / Allegro, ma non tanto - 25:13