Violin Concerto (Elgar) - History

History

Elgar had begun work on a violin concerto in 1890, but he was dissatisfied with it and destroyed the manuscript. In 1907 the violinist Fritz Kreisler, who admired Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, asked him to write a violin concerto. Two years earlier, Kreisler had told an English newspaper:

If you want to know whom I consider to be the greatest living composer, I say without hesitation Elgar. … I say this to please no one; it is my own conviction. … I place him on an equal footing with my idols, Beethoven and Brahms. He is of the same aristocratic family. His invention, his orchestration, his harmony, his grandeur, it is wonderful. And it is all pure, unaffected music. I wish Elgar would write something for the violin.

The Royal Philharmonic Society of London formally commissioned the concerto in 1909. Elgar, himself a violinist, called yet upon W. H. "Billy" Reed, leader of the London Symphony Orchestra, for technical advice while writing the concerto. Reed helped him with bowings, passage-work and fingerings, playing passages over and over again until Elgar was satisfied with them. Kreisler also made suggestions, some for making the solo part more brilliant and some for making it more playable. Before the premiere, Reed, with Elgar playing the orchestral part on the piano, played through the work at a private party.

The premiere was at a Royal Philharmonic Society concert on 10 November 1910, with Kreisler and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer. Reed recalled, "the Concerto proved to be a complete triumph, the concert a brilliant and unforgettable occasion". So great was the impact of the concerto that Kreisler's rival Eugène Ysaÿe spent much time with Elgar going through the work. There was great disappointment when contractual difficulties prevented Ysaÿe from playing it in London.

The concerto was Elgar's last great popular success. Of his later large-scale works neither the Second Symphony nor Falstaff nor the Cello Concerto achieved the immediate popularity of the First Symphony or this concerto. Elgar remained particularly fond of the work. His friend Charles Sanford Terry recalled "I have never heard Elgar speak of the personal note in his music except in regard to the concerto, and of it I heard him say more than once, 'I love it'." Elgar told Ivor Atkins that he would like the nobilmente theme in the andante inscribed on his tomb.

Even in the 1950s when Elgar's music was unfashionable, the concerto featured frequently in concert programmes. By the end of the twentieth century, when Elgar's music was once again in the general repertory, there were more than 20 gramophone recordings of the concerto. In 2010, the centenary year of the work, the violinist Nikolaj Znaider began a series of performances in venues including Vienna, London and New York, with the Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and conductors Valery Gergiev and Sir Colin Davis. Also in 2010 Philippe Graffin gave a performance at the Three Choirs Festival using Elgar's original manuscript, and new recordings were issued by Znaider, Thomas Zehetmair, and Tasmin Little.