Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 1893) Violin Concerto in D major, Opus 35 (1878) 1. Allegro moderato 2. Canzonetta: Andante 3. Finale: Allegro vivacissimo Tchaikovsky travelled to Europe following his disastrous marriage and eventually settled for a period in the resort of Clärens on the banks of Lake Geneva where he embarked on composing his single Violin Concerto. He was aided in this project by the presence of his former pupil Josef Kotek with whom he spent many hours playing through works for solo violin, including Edouard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole. This work particularly impressed Tchaikovsky and he wrote to his patroness Nadezdha von Meck of ‘its freshness, lightness, piquant rhythms and melodic appeal’ and so the Symphonie espagnole may be considered the main catalyst for his own Concerto. More than anything he appreciated Lalo’s concern for musical beauty above everything eise and in particular not striving after profundity in the Germanic tradition. Tchaikovsky therefore had this model in mind when he came to create his own masterpiece in the genre. Composition work was completed quickly - he started on 17th March 1878 and had sketched the entire work by 28th March. However, both his brother Modest and Josef Kotek expressed doubts about the proposed slow movement. Tchaikovsky also shared these misgivings and so composed an entirely new Canzonetta, Publishing the discarded movement separately as Meditation, the first of three pieces for violin and piano, Souvenir d’un Heu eher, Opus 42. Tchaikovsky completed the Orchestration of the Concerto by 11th April 1878. Despite Kotek’s major role in its creation, Tchaikovsky decided to dedicate the work to the Violinist and composer Leopold Auer (1845-1930), saying to his publisher that he wanted ‘to avoid gossip of various kinds’ and there is the Suggestion that there may have been a sexual aspect to his relationship with Kotek. With echoes of Rubinstein’s disastrous initial reaction to his earlier First Piano Concerto, Auer declared the Violin Concerto to be impossible to play and so the work languished for the next couple of years until taken up by Adolf Brodsky (1851-1929) who gave the work its premiere in December 1881 in Vienna under the baton of Hans Richter. The critic Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904) gave the work one of his particularly poisonous critiques, which wounded Tchaikovsky, but there were also more positive reviews. Like Anton Rubinstein betöre him, Auer later revised his views on the Concerto and went on to be one of its greatest Champions. True to his word, Tchaikovsky’s opening movement only pays lip-service to the principles of sonata- form. We can recall Tchaikovsky’s unbounded enthusiasm for Mikhail Glinka’s brief orchestral Fantasy Kamarinskaya (1848), which Tchaikovsky likened to the acorn from which the great oak tree of Russian music would grow; Tchaikovsky decorated his themes accordingly, rather than following the Austro-German principle of thematic development. Like the First Piano Concerto the work Starts with a theme that will play no part in the rest of the Concerto, although this introduction is much briefer than that famous opening gambit. The Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s reflections on her role in the Concerto (as written in an open letter to her conductor in her recent recording of the work) are particularly apt: ‘Would you like to know what I am when the concerto begins? An observer. I stand outside on the Street in the cold winter, breathing onto the frozen windowpane. Through a small chink in the hoar frost I spy glittering candelabras, evening gowns, uniforms, colours, splendour and haughtiness.
