My Three Favorite Violin Concertos

During my graduate school years, I had the opportunity to appreciate classical music via an adult education class that I took during Night school in Chicago, Illinois in the early 1960's. I am posting excerpts from three of my favorite violin concertos for your listening pleasure as follows:

1. Mendelssohn Violin Concerto: 

I first heard of this violin piece in 1952 when I was in first year college at the University of the Philippines, Iloilo College. One of my dorm mates was a violinist. He informed me he had been playing the violin since he was 10 years old. He hailed from Bacolod City. On Saturdays, he would play his violin with his door closed not disturbing his fellow dorm mates. But the sound of his violin reverberated on the thin walls separating our room. One day I heard the Mendelssohn concerto and I was forced to knock on his door asking him if I could stay in his room to listen while he was playing the piece. This was the first time I really enjoyed listening to a classical violin music.

2. Paganini Violin Concerto, No.1

Sources differ as to when exactly Paganini composed his Violin Concerto No. 1; dating Paganini’s works is complicated by the fact during his life, Paganini sought to keep the techniques of his fantastic virtuosity secret by withholding the majority of his compositions from publication. The concerto certainly dates from the mid-to-late 1810s, when Paganini was establishing himself as Italy’s leading violinist by touring the peninsula’s cities.

For Paganini’s contemporaries, there was almost something miraculous about his playing. His music was unlike anything anyone had heard before—so difficult, so extravagant that no one else could play it. In his later years, when Paganini toured Austria, Germany, France, and England, his Romantic Northern European critics would hear something demonic in his extraordinary abilities, playing into centuries-old legends of violinists who sold their souls to the devil (his then gaunt appearance and reputation as a seducer no doubt fanned the flames of such rumors).(https://houstonsymphony.org/paganini-violin-concerto-1/)

3.Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major

The Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 was the only concerto for violin composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1878 and is one of the best-known violin concertos. The piece is in three movements:

1. Allegro moderato (D major)
2. Canzonetta: Andante (G minor)
3. Finale: Allegro vivacissimo (D major)

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.

My honorable mention are: Saint Saens, Dvorak, Brahms and Beethoven Violin Concertos.

Meanwhile, here's excerpts from ten other violin concertos

Blogging Notes: I will be posting a 12-part series on Macrine J Katague Celebration of Life through her favorite music in 12 categories beginning next week. Watch for it!