Program Notes – Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47

Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47
Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)
Written: 1902–04
Movements: Three
Style: Romantic
Duration: 31 minutes

“I wanted to be a celebrated violinist,” Jean Sibelius told a friend. “From the age of fifteen, I played my violin for ten years practically from morning to night. I hated pen and ink and, unfortunately, preferred an elegant violin bow. My preference for the violin lasted quite long, and it was a very painful awakening when I had to admit that I had begun my training for the exacting career of an eminent performer too late.” Instead, Sibelius became the most celebrated composer from Finland. He wrote seven symphonies and many other orchestral works, a host of songs and choral works, lots of incidental music for the theater, a fair number chamber and piano pieces, and only one concerto—for the violin.

He began work on his Violin Concerto in 1902 at the pleading of the violinist Willy Burmester, the concertmaster in Helsingfors. Sibelius’ life was in turmoil. He was heavily in debt, his marriage was in trouble and, as his friends put it, he preferred partying and drinking to composing. When he finally finished the concerto, he sent it off to Burmester. “Wonderful! Masterful!” was his reply. “Only once before have I spoken in such terms to a composer and that was when Tchaikovsky showed me his concerto.” But, for some strange reason, Sibelius intentionally scheduled the premiere on a date when Burmester couldn’t appear. Instead, Victor Novàček, a violin teacher of little repute, gave the premiere and the results were disastrous. Sibelius revised the concerto. Again Burmester offered to play it and again Sibelius passed him over, this time in favor of Karl Halir, the concertmaster in Berlin. Offended, Burmester never touched the work for the rest of his life.
In spite of Bermester’s initial appreciation of the concerto, others were not quite so positive. The great Joachim, for whom Brahms wrote his violin concerto, called it “abominable and boring.” One critic wrote:
Even in its revised form the concerto will not, I think, win wide appreciation. With the exception of the Adagio, the concerto is far too complex, far too busy, dark and dingy, rhapsodic in spite of its tauter form, and above all it is laden with technical and rhythmic difficulties of such a kind that even the greatest master of the instrument will be hard put to make a successful repertoire work of it that will really catch the public ear.
The critic was right about the technical demands. It is one of the most challenging in the repertoire. He was wrong about its fate. It stands as the greatest violin concerto of the 20th century.

The entire first movement is in minor. It has a haunting and somber quality. The low instruments—the clarinets and bassoons and the low brass—seem to predominate. Even the violins play in their low register. The solo violin spins out its rhapsodic statements over this somber accompaniment. There are two solo cadenzas: one near the beginning of the movement and the other right in the middle where a development section would normally occur. Olin Downes, one of this work’s early champions, described this first movement as “Bardic songs heard against a background of torches or pagan fires in some wild Northern night.” The second movement is broad and deeply expressive. While still dark in quality, it’s at least in a major key! Finally, the last movement lets loose with a relentless driving rhythm in what Sibelius himself described as a “Danse macabre.”

©2024 John P. Varineau