Alexander Glazunov, Violin Concerto

Born in St. Petersburg in 1865 into a well-to-do family, Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov began studying piano at the age of nine and decided to try his hand at composition at eleven. He chose the right path, because soon after he had finished his First Symphony, which after a year had its premiere under the baton of Mili Balakirev. The reception was so warm that the young musician found himself, overnight, becoming a distinguished Russian composer. He was 16 years old. Not long after, Liszt would conduct his opera prima in Weimar.

The Conservatory and the exile
A disciple of Rimsky-Korsakov, by the end of the century, he had already made a name for himself before age 35. A professor of composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he then took over its leadership in 1905, a position in which he would remain until 1928, when, taking advantage of an invitation to Vienna to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Schubert's death, he left Russia, never to return. Glazunov did not feel comfortable at the head of this school, he disagreed that music could be a vehicle for propaganda.

Alexander Glazunov (1865 - 1936)

An excessively formal symphonism
And just as Soviet Russia had branded him a "bourgeois artist" and accused him of not being "Russian" enough, Western Europe began to label his music as excessively "Europeanized". Finally, the composer, in his sixties, no longer seemed to please anyone. Moreover, based in Paris, his eight symphonies could not avoid the competition of those of Brahms, Bruckner, or Mahler.
In his later years, Glazunov, like Rachmaninoff (whose First Symphony Glazunov was rumored to have premiered being a little drunk), was openly considered an "old-fashioned" composer.

Concerto for violin and orchestra in A minor, opus 82
Glazunov had experienced his finest hour twenty years earlier, when he was appointed director of the Conservatory. From that time dates what is perhaps his most enduring work, the Concerto for violin and orchestra in A minor. Composed in 1904, it had its premiere in St. Petersburg on February 15, 1905 (three weeks after the outbreak of the revolutionary events of that year).

Movements

Despite the lack of sections or parts clearly identified by the author, it is customary to consider that the work consists of three movements. Other views point to four. Or a single movement in sonata form, if it is agreed that the "second" movement is part, strangely, of the "first" —a Glazunov oddity, attached to this elegant and romantic work.

00       Moderato

04:26  Andante sostenuto

14:50  Allegro

The performance is by violinist Julia Fisher, accompanied by the Bamber Symphony, under the baton of Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša.