Violin Concertos - A battle with the orchestra

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The violin concerto is a grand tradition all of itself – no surprise given that the concerto as a genre essentially began with the violin. The word concerto is derived from the Latin concertare – which has a couple of meanings: firstly, to come together, to unite, and secondly, to compete. And it’s this second meaning that has driven composers to write ever more virtuosic music, the soloists in effect competing against the orchestra and even themselves…

So – back in late 17th-century Italy, the concerto grosso developed, scored for an ensemble split into two – larger orchestra called the ripieno, and the concertino a small group of solo violinists. Italian composers such as Corelli and Stradella were at the forefront of the concerto grosso, writing thrilling, dramatic works that make the absolute most of this contrast of orchestra and soloists. But by the time the 18th century came along, and violin technique had come on considerably, the solo concerto started to become king. After all, no violinist with grand ambitions wanted to share the stage with a rival soloist. Torelli was the composer who paved the way in that respect, followed soon after by Vivaldi, whose almost 400 sparkling concertos for violin set the standard to come for the following 100 years. By the time Bach had brought the concerto over to Germany with two of the violin repertoire’s greatest contributions, his A minor and E minor concertos, the violin concerto was a force to be reckoned with. And the concerto grosso was obsolete.

In the second half of the 18th century, Mozart brought a classical beauty to the genre – his five concertos almost symphonic in terms of their scale, and the ambition of their harmonic and structural form. But it was Beethoven who brought an intimacy to the concerto – violin and orchestra at one, serving each other, competing to an extent, yes, but always complementary. A sort of ‘after you’; ‘no, after you’… It’s virtuosic, yes, but not for the sake of being virtuosic. Every phrase serves the music. But that wasn’t to last long, and while the great composers continued to lift the violin concerto to new stylistic heights, the ever more technically brilliant standards of playing and louder instruments encouraged the likes of Brahms, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Sibelius to return to the idea of the soloist competing against the orchestra, cadenzas no longer improvised as they were in the 18th century, but written by the composers themselves in a bid to make the player sweat.

And the advent of louder, more brash steel-wound strings in the 20th century as opposed to the softer sound of the gut string, gave a license to composers to write with even more originality, larger orchestral forces, more proficient soloists: Elgar, whose concerto is among his very greatest work, plus Walton, Britten, Berg and Shostakovich. But what of today? Can our current crop of composers can keep the violin concerto flame alight? It still remains to be seen.

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