Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, considered by many to be Russia's greatest Romantic composer, was born into a military family in the city of Votkinsk some 600 miles east of Moscow. His half-French mother, Alexandra, overburdened with six children, hired a French nanny when Peter was four years old. The precocious boy doted on Fanny, the nanny, who taught him French and German. By the age of eight he could read music and play the piano. However, two years later he was sent to boarding at the School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg to train as a civil servant because there was no financial future for musicians. During his nine years there, he fell in love with Sergey Kireyev, a fellow student. According to Peter's brother, Modest, that was his first and purest love.

Upon graduating, Tchaikovsky landed a job with the St. Petersburg Ministry of Justice. Some five years later, he was enrolled in the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music, which had just been established. After four years, he graduated and was appointed professor of music at the newly created Moscow Conservatory of Music.

Tchaikovsky's disastrous marriage to Antonina Miliukova in 1877 resulted in both a mental and physical breakdown for the composer. With help from his brother, Modest, and the philanthropy of the wealthy widow, Nadezhda von Meck, at 38 Peter found tranquil lodgings in the resort village of Clarens on Lake Geneva. Before long, he was joined by Iosif Kotec, a former composition student of his who had just finished violin master classes in Berlin with Joseph Joachim. While the assumption that Kotec had a romantic liaison with Tchaikovsky is speculative, the fact that he was a violinist inspired the composer to temporally abandon the Piano Sonata in G major, on which he had been working, and to commence work on a Violin Concerto in D major. Tchaikovsky did not play violin but, with the help of Kotec, this work was completed in a month.

Tchaikovsky wanted to dedicate this work to Iosif Kotec but, fearing homosexual exposure, dedicated it instead to Leopold Auer, a famous violinist and pedagogue with wives and children. However, Auer was less than enthusiastic with the work so Tchaikovsky rededicated it to Adolph Brodsky, who gave the first performance under Hans Richter on December 4,1881 in Vienna.

The soloist in today's performance, with South Florida Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestra Sebrina Maria Alfonso, is Askar Salimdjanov. He began studying violin at the age of seven in the city of

Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In 2018 he won the Lyric Chamber Music Competition. More recently, he has been a pupil of Elmar Oliveira at the Lynn Conservatory.

The first movement is in sonata form. Following a short orchestral introduction, the violin enters with a cadenza-like opening before introducing the main theme. The calm melodic second theme is in A major. The rest of the movement is both exciting and technically challenging, with a race to the finish that usually elicits audience applause. The slow second movement opens with woodwinds followed by the opening theme introduced by the violin. Once fully developed, this lovely movement gradually transitions through a series of chords, without a break into the third and final movement. This wonderfully climactic conclusion is heavily inspired by Russian folk music. It ends with a brilliant coda, which is almost guaranteed to bring the audience to its feet.

Program note by Ian A. Fraser.