Concerto No. 4 in D Minor

A showpiece 19th-century concerto, big with sweeping gestures and expressive heart-on-sleeve emotion, this is music that has turned full circle in public opinion—drawing adulation in its own time before falling out of favour as a piece of froth, and now revalued for the mastery that underpins its surface brilliance. It’s the work of someone who didn’t just write violin concertos (seven in all) but performed them, with a reputation that rivalled Paganini and Joachim as perhaps the greatest of all 19th-century virtuosi. And it was his personal favourite of the seven, written in 1850, when Vieuxtemps (who was Belgian by birth) was based in Saint Petersburg as resident violinist to Czar Nicholas I. With four movements that incorporate exhilarating triple-stopped glissandi and other crowd-pleasing tricks, there’s still enough serious form and substance in the composition for the piece to be regarded by many as a symphony with solo violin.