Sibelius : Concerto in D minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 47

By the time Sibelius composed the first version of his Violin Concerto, in 1903, he had behind him his first two symphonies and such other works as the Four Legends from the Kalevala (including The Swan of Tuonela), the Karelia Suite, En Saga, the choral symphony Kullervo, and of course Finlandia. The Concerto is regarded as the work that brought this rich “first period” to its close. It is truly symphonic in concept, thoroughly Romantic in spirit, and rhapsodic in nature if not in design. The delicate initial phrase of the first movement opens out into an impassioned theme as unabashed in its emotional thrust as anything in the concertos of Bruch or Wieniawski. Occasional flickerings of the wind instruments, and the growling bassoon in particular, serve to re-emphasize the specifically Sibelian atmosphere as (in the words of Olin Downes, Sibelius's earliest and most energetic champion among American music critics) “bardic songs heard against a background of torches or pagan fires in some wild Northern night.”

The radiant slow movement begins with a phrase somewhat similar in both shape and coloring to the opening of Ravel's Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and strings (written a few months after the Concerto's second premiere). It is deeply and directly expressive music, distinguished by the subtle restraint that keeps its proportions concise and keeps its seemingly uninhibited outpouring from running to bluster.

Inhibitions seem to be still more relaxed (which is to say, the restraints are still more subtle) in the final movement. Those who insist on reading some patriotic or programmatic connotations into everything Sibelius wrote may let their imaginations run free, but the composer himself made no allusion to the Violin Concerto as being descriptive in any sense, except a casual reference to this movement alone as “a danse macabre.” This singular finale happens to be a sort of polonaise--an eccentric and impassioned one, to be sure, as much defiant as celebratory. In it are more than a few evocations of the “epic” character identified with Sibelius from his early tone poem En Saga to the valedictory Tapiola --but almost everything about the melodic line itself is unusual, and the exploration of the solo instrument's upper limits leading into the final peroration has an eerie quality (emphasized by terse outbursts from the brass) that lingers in the mind long after the last note has sounded. A reference to the date given in the first paragraph of these notes indicates that last month marked the centenary of the premiere of the revised version of the Concerto. It is no less significant to observe that this month is one year short of the centenary of the work's American premiere, given by Maud Powell with the New York Philharmonic under Vassily Safonoff on November 30, 1906. Maud Powell, the earliest great American violinist, was surely this work's outstanding champion from that time until her death at age 52 in 1920. She performed it ceaselessly and everywhere with missionary zeal as well as an abundance of both brilliance and tastefulness, and received the composer's grateful acknowledgement on several occasions.