Violin Concerto in D Major

Few great works have experienced a more bizarre first performance than Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. It was written for the violinist Franz Clement, who received the enormously taxing solo part only a few days before the scheduled premiere in December 1806 in Vienna. Since there was no opportunity for any detailed rehearsal, it was almost inevitable that this performance would be a disaster, so much so that between the first and second movements, Clement apparently interrupted musical proceedings by playing an improvisation on one string while holding his violin upside down. A second performance the following year did little to further the Violin Concerto’s reputation, and it was only in 1844, when the work was revived in London by violinist Joseph Joachim and conductor Felix Mendelssohn, that its significance was finally recognised. The expansive orchestral introduction to the first movement, dominated by a repeated four-note pattern heard initially in the timpani, sets the scene for the first entry of the solo violin, which is characterised by some tricky and florid passage work. Thereafter, much of the dialogue between violin and orchestra is lyrical and reflective, particularly so in a hauntingly beautiful section in the middle of the movement. The second movement, “Larghetto”, continues very much in the same vein before the bucolic “Rondo” finale, which follows without a break, finds Beethoven in a much more extroverted frame of mind.