As a member of a minority in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Antonín Dvořák was looked upon as a second-class citizen. He sensed condescension in the support and encouragement of the Austrian musical establishment and was resentful at being forced by economic necessity to accept government stipends. Beginning with the 1870s, influenced by the emerging Czech demand for self-rule and of Bedřich Smetana's nationalistic music, Dvořák applied a decidedly more nationalistic style to his musical language.

By the time Dvořák started the Violin Concerto in the summer of 1879, prizes, honors and commissions were pouring in. The suggestion to write a violin concerto came from Simrock, and Dvořák hoped to enlist the help of the famed violinist Joseph Joachim to evaluate and edit the concerto. Joachim, who had also helped Brahms and Max Bruch with their concertos, suggested after a trial rehearsal that the composer start from scratch. Dvořák rewrote the Concerto and destroyed the original version. He finally completed it in 1882, stating, “I have retained the themes, and composed some new ones too, but the whole concept of the work is different.” But still the two friends did not see eye to eye. Joachim, although the dedicatee, did not premiere the finished work.

There is no specific information regarding Joachim’s objections to Dvořák’s Concerto. On the surface, it shares many elements with the concertos of Brahms, Bruch and Mendelssohn, frequently performed by Joachim. Unlike these works, however, the Concerto strays from the more conventional forms in the first and second movements, in which Dvořák reveals an intensely emotional, almost elegiac side of his musical personality.

The Concerto is in the conventional three-movement form, but the first two are played without interruption. A short orchestral fanfare followed by a lyrical melody on the solo violin present the material from which this extensive first movement is built, although a second theme is introduced much later. There is no formal recapitulation, only a six bar fragment that leads to the transition to the second movement.

The slow movement opens with a gentle melody on the solo violin, answered by the flute. But the initial folk-like simplicity of the melody is deceptive; Dvořák develops it, as well as the new theme in the middle section, with abrupt harmonic shifts that blatantly tug at the heartstrings. Listeners familiar with the later and better-known Cello Concerto will perceive the same tragic sensibility that the composer used there to pour out his grief upon hearing of the death of his old love. The movement is largely a personal conversation between the violin and the upper winds. It also provides the soloist with an opportunity for some delicate figurative passages, but always subdued, in keeping with the wistful mood.

In the finale Dvořák reveals his Bohemian roots; the soloist introduces a lively dance, a furiant that recurs as a refrain throughout the movement, each time with a different instrumental mix. 

Program notes by:
Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn
Wordpros@mindspring.com
www.wordprosmusic.com