Violin Concerto (Mendelssohn)
Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, MWV O 14, is his last concerto. Well received at its premiere, it has remained among the most prominent and highly-regarded violin concertos. It holds a central place in the violin repertoire and has developed a reputation as an essential concerto for all aspiring concert violinists to master, and usually one of the first Romantic era concertos they learn.[1][2][3] A typical performance lasts just under half an hour.
Mendelssohn originally proposed the idea of the violin concerto to Ferdinand David, a close friend and then concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Although conceived in 1838, the work took another six years to complete and was not premiered until 1845. During this time, Mendelssohn maintained a regular correspondence with David, who gave him many suggestions. The work itself was one of the foremost violin concertos of the Romantic era and was influential on many other composers.
Although the concerto consists of three movements in a standard fast–slow–fast structure and each movement follows a traditional form, it was innovative and included many novel features for its time. Distinctive aspects include the almost immediate entrance of the violin at the beginning of the work (rather than following an orchestral preview of the first movement's major themes, as was typical in Classical-era concertos) and the through-composed form of the concerto as a whole, in which the three movements are melodically and harmonically connected and played attacca (each movement immediately following the previous one without any pauses).
Many violinists have recorded the concerto and it is performed in concerts and classical music competitions. It was recorded by Nathan Milstein and the New York Philharmonic as an album and released as the first LP record upon the format's introduction in 1948.[4]
Analysis[edit]
The concerto is innovative in many respects. In the first movement alone, Mendelssohn departs from the typical form of a Classical concerto in many ways, the most immediate being the entry of the soloist almost from the outset, which also occurs in his First Piano Concerto.[13] Although the first movement is mostly in the conventional sonata form, Mendelssohn has the first theme played by the solo violin and then by the orchestra. Classical concertos typically opened with an orchestral introduction followed by a version of essentially the same material that incorporates the soloist.[10]
The cadenza is also novel in that it is written out as part of the concerto[9] and located before the recapitulation.[10] In a typical Classical concerto, the cadenza is improvised by the performing soloist and occurs at the end of a movement, after the recapitulation and just before the final coda. Mendelssohn's written cadenza was not included in the first published version of the concerto, but instead a "streamlined" version by Ferdinand David without the contrapuntal complexity of the original. This is the most played version today, although some artists, e.g. Arabella Steinbacher, play Mendelssohn's original.[16] Joshua Bell performs the concerto with his own cadenza.[17]
The violin concerto stands out from previous concertos with its connected movements.[9] There is no break between the first and second movements, with a bassoon note held between the two.[10] The bridging passage between the last two movements begins almost immediately after the slow movement. The melody is similar to that of the opening, which hints at the cyclic form of the piece.[18] The linking was designed to eliminate applause between movements. This would have come as a surprise to Mendelssohn's audience, who, unlike today's, were used to applauding between movements.[10]
The concerto also calls on the soloist to function as an accompanist to the orchestra for extended periods, such as the ricochet arpeggios at the start of the recapitulation. This too was novel for a violin concerto of its time.[9]