Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Composed in 1844.
Premiered on March 13, 1845 in Leipzig,
conducted by Niels Gade with Ferdinand David as soloist.

“I would like to compose a violin concerto for next winter,”
Mendelssohn wrote in July 1838 to his friend, the violinist
Ferdinand David. “One in E minor keeps running through
my head, and the opening gives me no peace.” It was for
David that Mendelssohn planned and wrote his only mature
Violin Concerto. Their friendship began when the two first
met at about the age of fifteen while the young violinist was
on a concert tour through Germany. They were delighted
to discover the coincidence that David had been born only
eleven months after Mendelssohn in the same neighborhood
in Hamburg. Already well formed even in those early years,
David’s playing was said to have combined the serious, classical restraint of Ludwig Spohr, his teacher, the elegance of the French tradition and the technical brilliance of Paganini.
Mendelssohn, who admired both the man and his playing, saw
to it that David was appointed concertmaster of the Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra when he became that organization’s
music director in 1835. They remained close friends and
musical allies. When Mendelssohn’s health was feeble, David
looked after much of the routine activity of the Gewandhaus,
where he spent 37 years, and he even stepped in to conduct
the premiere of Mendelssohn’s oratorio St. Paul when the
composer was stricken during a measles epidemic in 1836.

Despite his good intentions and the gentle prodding of David to complete his Violin Concerto, Mendelssohn did not get around to serious work on the score until 1844. He had been very busy with other composition and conducting projects, including a particularly troublesome one as director of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. The requirements of that position — which included composing the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream — took much of his time, and it was not until he resigned from the post in 1844 that he was able to complete the Violin Concerto. He worked closely with David during the composition of the piece, inviting his suggestions about both the technique of the soloist’s part and the suitability of the music as a vehicle for the violin. An abiding concern was that the violin part “could be executed with the greatest delicacy.” He deferred to David in most of the technical questions, and it seems that David himself was responsible for the work’s single, finely crafted cadenza.

The Concerto opens with a soaring violin melody whose lyricism exhibits a grand passion tinged with restless, Romantic melancholy. Some glistening passagework for the violinist leads through a transition melody to the second theme, a quiet, sunny strain shared by woodwinds and soloist. More glistening arabesques from the violinist and a quickened rhythm close the exposition. The succinct development section is largely based on the opening theme. In this Concerto, Mendelssohn moved the cadenza forward from its traditional place as an appendage near the end of the fi rst movement to become an integral component of the structure, here separating the development from the recapitulation. It leads seamlessly into the restatement of the movement’s thematic material and the exhilarating closing pages.

The thread of a single note sustained by the bassoon carries the Concerto to the Andante, a song rich in warm sentiment and endearing elegance. This slow movement’s center section is distinguished by its rustling accompaniment and bittersweet minor-mode melody. A dozen measures of chordal writing for strings link this movement with the finale, an effervescent sonata form that trips along with the distinctive aerial grace of which Mendelssohn was the undisputed master.

Notes by Dr. Richard E. Rodda