Beethoven Violin 

Concerto 

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2025 | 7:30PM

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2025 | 3:00PM

Valentina Peleggi  |  conductor

Francesca Dego  |  violin

RICHMOND SYMPHONY

“When it comes to a masterpiece like the Beethoven Violin Concerto,” says Music Director Valentina Peleggi, “I always check: when was the last time the orchestra performed it, and how many times?” To her surprise, she discovered that Beethoven’s iconic concerto hadn’t been programmed by the Richmond Symphony in over 
two decades.

“You cannot hide in the Beethoven Violin Concerto,” she adds. “It’s so clean and virtuosic – but not romantically virtuosic. It’s pristine. It’s about intonation, about articulation” – just the thing for violinist and author Francesca Dego.

Peleggi singles out the unusual way Beethoven opens his concerto with four timpani strokes, barely audible – a moment full of mystery. “I often ask: what is that meant to convey? Is it martial? Or is it a question? When I conducted this piece in Italy with a chamber orchestra, I suddenly felt it is more about searching: not a gesture of reassurance, but a question mark.”

Charles Ives / The Unanswered Question

That image of a question mark became the key to this program’s architecture. Peleggi has decided to preface the Beethoven with The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives, moving directly from Ives’s music into the concerto, without a break—no time for applause. “There’s this big question left hanging in the air, and it transitions suddenly into Beethoven’s ambiguous opening. I’ve never done it before, but I wanted to experiment.”

Named after a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question (1908, revised later) imagines what he called “the perennial question of existence.” Three musical layers represent different characters: serene, slow-moving strings (“the silence of the Druids”); a solo trumpet repeatedly posing a dissonant question; and woodwinds who try—louder and faster each time—to answer. Their replies collapse into chaos before the trumpet poses its question one last time. There is no final answer—only the quiet persistence of the strings.

Ludwig van Beethoven / Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was composed in 1806 for Franz Clement, a former prodigy known for his delicacy and refinement. Despite Clement’s star power, the Concerto didn’t catch on right away. Audiences may have expected a showier piece. And while not as outwardly radical as the Eroica Symphony (which had premiered in the same venue less than two years earlier), the Violin Concerto was quietly revolutionary. It would take a later generation—especially the great violinist Joseph Joachim—to recognize its depth and bring it into 
the repertoire.

Beethoven opens with the aforementioned pattern of repeated timpani strokes—a rhythmic idea that recurs obsessively, even hauntingly. When the violins take it up, the line momentarily strays into harmonic ambiguity, casting a shadow over the otherwise sunny orchestral introduction. Beethoven delays the soloist’s entrance, and then holds off the lyrical first theme even longer. The scale of the opening movement is vast, but the tone is one of elegant exploration, not struggle.

In the slow movement, Beethoven dwells in the violin’s upper range, writing phrases of rapturous stillness. A gentle theme returns again and again in shifting instrumental colors, while the soloist weaves ecstatic variations around it. A short cadenza leads directly into the finale: a Rondo, in which a lively main theme alternates with contrasting episodes. Horn calls suggest a hunting party, while the dance-like energy brings us back to earth from the poetic heights of the earlier movements.

Antonín Dvořák / Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70, B. 141

Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony also explores themes of questioning and transformation. He composed it in 1885 for the Royal Philharmonic Society in London, which had recently named him an honorary member. Dvořák chose D minor—the same key Beethoven used for his Ninth Symphony, which was dedicated to the Society. The result is a taut, emotionally charged symphony, darker than the later, more famous New World.

The Seventh marked a turning point. At a time when many in the German-speaking musical establishment still viewed Slavic composers with skepticism, Dvořák made a compelling case for his place among Europe’s symphonic elite. Critics in Vienna and Berlin often dismissed Czech artists as “folk colorists,” not serious symphonists. But in this work, Dvořák matches the structural discipline and emotional depth of Brahms and Beethoven.

Alongside these public ambitions, the Seventh also carries personal weight: Dvořák was mourning the death of his mother, who had passed away in late 1882. Some have likened the slow movement to a Requiem. The music shows his gift for subtle orchestral color—mingling sorrow, beauty, and memory.

The opening movement begins in shadow, rising from the lowest instruments. A stormy theme emerges, and flutes and clarinets soon offer a moment of pastoral calm. But a tragic climax looms, only to fade on an unsettling chord. Even amid this gravity, the Scherzo brings a burst of Czech rhythmic fire, while the central Trio offers a lyrical promise of renewal.

But the finale returns us to the tragic world. A restless, brooding theme dominates, though flashes of sunlight break through. The final climax arrives with violent force. Even a shift to D major in the closing bars cannot quite dispel the storm clouds. The impact is lasting and grave—an ending that, perhaps, also implies a question mark.

(c)2025 Thomas May