A few years ago, a student of mine in Elliot Lake asked me to accompany her for the upcoming music festival in a performance of Wieniawski's Violin Concerto # 2 in D Minor. Of the composer, I knew only the name and the music was completely unknown to me.
This, I was to discover, is a sadly common state of affairs. Wieniawski was acclaimed in his lifetime by no less a figure than Anton Rubinstein as "without doubt the greatest violinist of his time." This second concerto was dedicated to "his dear friend, Pablo de Sarasate", the famous Spanish violin virtuoso. These concertos were known everywhere and played everywhere for many years after his death. Then came the change of attitude. Wieniawski's music fell out of favour, and was consigned by many to be fit only as a study work for advanced violin students.
From my first day of studying the piano reduction of the orchestral part, I guessed this was a mistaken attitude. In the short space of 16 bars, Wieniawski introduces two distinct melodies which may well be considered, short as they are, as the first and second main themes of the movement. The first is a restless, rapidly moving tune for the strings, the second a meltingly lyrical line for the solo horn. The two themes repeat while turning in a different direction and we are launched into a concerto first movement of a kind that Beethoven and Mozart would recognize, where a clear and complete (but brief) tutti for the orchestra precedes the first entry of the soloist.
But Wieniawski is never conventional. When (after a dramatic climax) the violin does enter, it takes up the horn melody and turns it in very unexpected directions. What follows is a kind of free fantasia on the musical themes, until at last the orchestra again takes the lead. By a more complex route, with significant alterations in the orchestration, the same great climax is reached and then the music dies away, bit by bit, becoming quieter and then slower. When the violin re-enters after several minutes we realize that we are now in the concerto's slow movement. Few composers have ever effected a seamless transition from a big fast movement to a simpler slow movement with such subtlety.
The slow movement is a nonstop outpouring of lyrical melody from the violin, discreetly supported by the orchestral strings (and occasionally the winds). This grows to a passionate climax (which always brought tears to my eyes when my student and I played it) and then dies away again to a gentle conclusion.
The final movement is separate. It's a gypsy rondo of a virtuoso kind familiar to such composers as Brahms and Liszt, but the fast-flying violin keeps twisting and turning unexpectedly into new and different keys. This is certainly a showpiece, but even as it flashes and glitters it still contains enough musical substance to give it more weight than some nineteenth-century virtuoso works.
The common feature of all three movements is the obstinately memorable melodies. It's difficult to listen to this music, and not come away humming some tune or other!
Shortly before that music festival, I picked up a copy of a DGG CD which contains the two violin concertos and a darkly lyrical piece called Legend in G Minor, along with the famous Zigeunerweisen of Sarasate as a fill-up. Gil Shaham is the violinist, and the London Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Lawrence Foster. Both concertos are played with brilliance and verve, but also with a clear realization of the kinship to the classicists. The symphonic weight of the orchestral passages is fully emphasized.
Of the other recordings I have found available, the great majority are either historic recordings by great violinists of the early years of the last century, or produced by small adventurous labels using relatively little-known artists. It seems a pity that this music, full of beauty and substance, has been thus consigned to the back rows of the cheap seats in the estimation of the musical world.
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