Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major, op. 35
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840 in Votinsk, Russia and died on November 6, 1893 in Saint Petersburg. He remains one of the most popular composers of all time, beloved especially for his symphonies, ballets, and concertos. His Violin Concerto was composed in 1878 and received its first performance in Vienna on December 4, 1881 with Russian virtuoso Adolph Brodsky as soloist and Hans Richter conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. Its first reviews were devastating, yet over the course of time it has become one of the most popular works in the concerto repertory.
The initial inspiration for Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto was a performance of Édouard Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole for violin and orchestra given by the great virtuoso, Yosif Kotek, sometime in late 1877 or early 1878. Tchaikovsky worked quickly on the new concerto, starting on March 17, 1878, taking a mere eleven days to sketch it out. The complete score was finished by April 11. How many works of such magnitude can claim such a short gestation period? Kotek, who served as technical advisor to Tchaikovsky (who was not a violinist), gave a private performance of the piece in Clarens, Switzerland on April 3.
Despite Kotek’s important role in the genesis of the piece, Tchaikovsky chose to dedicate it to Leopold Auer, professor of violin at the Conservatory in St. Petersburg. Auer, however, not only rejected the dedication, but went on to declare the concerto unplayable, advising all other violinists to shun it. Adolph Brodsky ignored Auer’s judgment and gave Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto is world premiere with orchestra on December 4, 1881 in Vienna. A scathing review by Eduard Hanslick in the Neue Freie Presse may be have been attributable in part to the fact that Brodsky was allowed only one rehearsal with orchestra. The orchestra parts, as it happened, were filled with so many mistakes that the conductor, Hans Richter, asked the orchestra to play pianissimo throughout the entire work. Hanslick may also have been comparing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with that of Brahms (a work that was composed at the same time as Tchaikovsky’s, and which had its premiere in Leipzig in 1879). A closer reading of Hanslick’s review, however, reveals a decidedly anti-Russian bias:
The Russian composer Tchaikovsky is surely not an ordinary talent, but rather an inflated one, with a genius-obsession without discrimination or taste. Such is also his latest, long and pretentious Violin Concerto. For a while it moves soberly, musically, and not without spirit. But soon vulgarity gains the upper hand, and asserts itself to the end of the first movement. The violin is no longer played; it is pulled, torn, drubbed. The Adagio is again on its best behavior, to pacify and to win us. But it soon breaks off to make way for a finale that transfers us to a brutal and wretched jollity of a Russian holiday. We see plainly the savage vulgar faces, we hear curses, we smell vodka. Friedrich Vischer once observed, speaking of obscene pictures, that they stink to the eye. Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear.
--translation by Nicholas Slonimsky, Lexicon of Musical Invective (Seattle, 1953)
This virulent anti-Russianism may also be found in other Viennese reviews, but the fact that the composer’s Russian confidante and patron, Madame von Meck, also was displeased with the Violin Concerto indicates that its national character was not its only problem. Tchaikovsky was, of course, deeply wounded by such hostility. Time, however, proved to be the Concerto’s best ally. In 1893, Auer himself finally performed the “unplayable” concerto (with modest revisions), and later went on to teach it to all of his most gifted pupils, among whom we may count some of the great virtuosi of the 20th century— Efram Zimbalist, Mischa Elman, and Jascha Heifetz. But Auer’s change of heart came too late in one sense. The composer dedicated the work, appropriately, to the courageous Brodsky.
Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto shares one important feature with another romantic concerto—the one for violin by Felix Mendelssohn. I refer here to a cadenza in the first movement that is written out by the composer and placed at the beginning of the recapitulation rather than at the end. Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, virtuosic showpiece that it is, is filled with many of the lovely melodies one associates with the composer’s most popular ballet scores. The melody of the Canzonetta (a substitution for the original slow movement, which was later issued independently as his Meditation, op. 42) surely ranks among Tchaikovsky’s most felicitous ideas. The solo part in the beginning of this movement is played with a mute, which not only softens the instrument’s dynamic range, but alters its tone color. The fiery Allegro vivacissimo finale, so despised by Hanslick, nowadays is admired and beloved for its indomitable sense of fun, as well as for the sheer excitement it is able to generate.
Program Note by David B. Levy © 2008/2015/2025