Program Notes

Jan Sibelius

Concerto in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 47 (1904, rev. 1905)

Scored for violin solo with pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings

 

Posterity should well be glad that Jan Sibelius never made it as a violin virtuoso. His passion for the instrument was enormous, but at the age of fifteen, he simply started too late to make a go of it. But even when he knew the life of a performer was not his calling, he never doubted that music was. Overcoming his confessed hatred of pen and ink, he wrote some of the greatest masterpieces of his time in a career spanning seventy years.

Though his ambition toward a career as a violinist was in vain, it nevertheless put Sibelius in the perfect position to write a violin concerto. When we consider the great concertos of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Brahms, we realize that they were dependent for advice on the great violinists of their age. Though all three were familiar with string playing, they were no more than amateurs. Sibelius, despite his own shortcomings knew the violin intimately and asked advice of no one. He did, however, have a violinist in mind. The highly respected former concertmaster of the Helsinki Orchestra, Willy Burmester.

When he sent his short score to Burmester, the virtuoso was overcome with admiration for the piece. He wrote, "Great, is all I can say! I believe absolutely in the future of this concerto!" It was intended by both Sibelius and Burmester that the latter would be given the premier and the dedication. But it didn't work out that way.

Likely for financial reasons, Sibelius seems to have been impatient. He insisted on a date which could never have given even Burmester enough time to master its considerable difficulties, and on which he wasn't available in any case. Burmester appealed, but Sibelius was adamant. The work was premiered on February 8, 1904. The soloist was Victor Novacek, a violin teacher at the Music Institute with little performance experience. It seemed a foregone conclusion that Novacek would never be able to scale the heights of this lofty work, and such turned out to be the case.

The critics were kind, but noncommittal. They seemed to recognize that Novacek was no champion of the work, but were not optimistic about its future. Flodin, the critic from the New Press , normally effusive concerning Sibelius was profoundly subdued. Even then he seemed to get what Sibelius was trying to do. He wrote, "It is quite clear that the composer did not want to write the kind of violin concerto that is nothing more than a symphonic orchestral work with an obbligato solo part. He accordingly chose the other alternative, allowing the soloist to reign supreme throughout and at the same time letting all the traditional pomp and circumstance develop. In the process, however, he was confronted with everything that others had already said, written and composed on the subject. It is quite impossible to come up with something really new. This was the reef on which his boat ran aground."

Sibelius, disappointed, seems to have taken the criticism to heart, for he set about revising it the following year, slightly simplifying the solo part and giving a bit more prominence to the orchestra, and it was in this version that it was performed in Berlin on October 19, 1905. This time the soloist was Carl Halir, and the conductor was none other than Richard Strauss. Strauss made sure that the orchestra was well-rehearsed, and this time the soloist had plenty of time to prepare. In this final version the work was well-received, but it took a little championing by the wunderkind Franz von Vecsey, the work's eventual dedicatee, before it was proclaimed the undisputed masterpiece that it is known to be today.

In the first movement the violin, as it does in each of the three movements, enters almost at once. It sings three themes which are explored and developed to their fullest potential in the exposition section. This approach necessitated a new innovation in the development section, which the composer delivered by dispensing with the section altogether. Instead he gave the soloist a brilliant, fully fledged cadenza, which leads directly into the recapitulation section.

The second movement is a lovely song in three parts. After a short introduction, the violin plays a long, rhapsodic passage filled with melancholic longing. The atmosphere builds for the middle section which allows the soloist to show what he's made of in difficult double-stop passages. In the final section, the opening melody is taken up by the orchestra while the soloist adds inspiring flourishes.

Sibelius is said to have described the finale as a danse macabre with its persistent long-short-short rhythm. But Donald Francis Tovey's delightful and oft-quoted description is still the best: he called it "a polonaise for polar bears." The violin takes up the main theme which, just as in the first movement, is varied and developed. The second theme is played by the orchestra in alternating 6/8, 3/4 time signatures. In the coda, the violinist is lost in a virtuosic haze and the work ends in a fiery climax.