1. Allegro moderato
Recorded in 1928.
Berlin State Opera Orchestra, William Steinberg, conducting
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto
The piece was written in Clarens, a Swiss resort on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Tchaikovsky had gone to recover from the depression brought on by his disastrous marriage to Antonina Miliukova. Tchaikovsky was joined there by his composition pupil, the violinist Iosif Kotek. The two played works for violin and piano together, including a violin-and-piano arrangement of Édouard Lalo's Symphonie espagnole, which they may have played through the day after Kotek's arrival. He wrote to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck, "It has a lot of freshness, lightness, of piquant rhythms, of beautiful and excellently harmonized melodies.... He [Lalo], in the same way as Léo Delibes and Bizet, does not strive after profundity, but he carefully avoids routine, seeks out new forms, and thinks more about musical beauty than about observing established traditions, as do the Germans." Tchaikovsky authority Dr. David Brown writes that Tchaikovsky "might almost have been writing the prescription for the violin concerto he himself was about to compose."
He made swift, steady progress on the concerto and the work was completed within a month despite the middle movement getting a complete. He sought the advice of Kotek on the completion of the solo part. "How lovingly he's busying himself with my concerto!" Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother Anatoly, "It goes without saying that I would have been able to do nothing without him. He plays it marvelously."
Tchaikovsky wanted to dedicate the concerto to Iosif Kotek, but felt constrained by the gossip this would undoubtedly cause about the true nature of his relationship with the younger man. (They were almost certainly lovers at one point, and Tchaikovsky was always at pains to disguise his homosexuality from the general public. In 1881, he broke with Kotek after he refused to play the concerto.)
Tchaikovsky intended the first performance to be given by Leopold Auer and dedicated the work to him. Auer refused, however, meaning that the planned premiere for March 1879 had to be cancelled and a new soloist found. In 1912, Auer told his version of the story to the New York magazine Musical Courier:
"When Tchaikovsky came to me one evening, about thirty years ago, and presented me with a roll of music, great was my astonishment on finding this proved to be the Violin Concerto, dedicated to me, completed and already in print. [Reduction for violin and piano] My first feeling was one of gratitude for this proof of his sympathy toward me, which honored me as an artist. On closer acquaintance with the composition, I regretted that the great composer had not shown it to me before committing it to print. Much unpleasantness might then have been spared us both....
Warmly as I had championed the symphonic works of the young composer), I could not feel the same enthusiasm for the Violin Concerto, with the exception of the first movement; still less could I place it on the same level as his purely orchestral compositions. I am still of the same opinion. My delay in bringing the concerto before the public was partly due to this doubt in my mind as to its intrinsic worth, and partly that I would have found it necessary, for purely technical reasons, to make some slight alterations in the passages of the solo part. This delicate and difficult task I subsequently undertook, and re-edited the violin solo part, and it is this edition which has been played by me, and also by my pupils, up to the present day. It is incorrect to state that I had declared the concerto in its original form unplayable. What I did say was that some of the passages were not suited to the character of the instrument, and that, however perfectly rendered, they would not sound as well as the composer had imagined. From this purely aesthetic point of view only I found some of it impracticable, and for this reason I re-edited the solo part.
Tchaikovsky, hurt at my delay in playing the concerto in public and quite rightly too (I have often deeply regretted it, and before his death received absolution from him), now proceeded to have a second edition published, and dedicated the concerto this time to Adolf Brodsky, who brought it out in Vienna, where it met with much adverse criticism, especially from Hanslick....
... The concerto has made its way in the world, and after all, that is the most important thing. It is impossible to please everybody."
Critical reaction was mixed. The influential critic Eduard Hanslick called it "long and pretentious," that it "brought us face to face with the revolting thought that music can exist which stinks to the ear," that "the violin was not played but beaten black and blue", and labeled the last movement "odorously Russian".
