Violin Concerto

At age 35, Felix Mendelssohn could already look back on an international career of a decade and a half. He was happily married and, by 1844, the father of four. His first name, Felix (Latin for “happy”), appeared to be a good omen for his life. No one could then have predicted Mendelssohn’s tragic death only three years later. 

His Violin Concerto in E minor was a gift of friendship to a musician particularly close to his heart. Mendelssohn had known Ferdinand David (1810–73) since boyhood, and shortly after the composer took over the directorship of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, he invited the violinist to be his concertmaster. David held this position for 37 years, serving long after Mendelssohn’s untimely death. The composer’s fondness for David can be seen in this passage from an 1838 letter to the violinist: “I realize that there are not many musicians who pursue such a straight road in art undeviatingly as you do, or in whose active course I could feel the same intense delight that I do in yours.” 

Mendelssohn penned this tender tribute the same year he created his first sketches of the E-minor Violin Concerto. Other commitments, however, prevented him from completing the work until 1844. The concerto would be one of his last symphonic compositions, followed only by the oratorio Elijah. 

The concerto seems to perfectly reflect the composer’s sunny disposition. In this work, as elsewhere in Mendelssohn’s music, Romantic passion is always tempered by Classical restraint, tender and lyrical feelings are balanced by light, even humorous moments, and depth of expression goes hand in hand with virtuosity. 

One of Mendelssohn’s most innovative touches happens at the very beginning of the concerto, where he dispenses with the usual orchestral exposition and introduces the solo instrument right away with a soaring melody. The violin remains the center of attention throughout the entire work, with only a few tutti sections for the entire orchestra where the soloist doesn’t play. 

In another striking departure from convention, the three movements of the concerto are played without pause. It wasn’t the only time Mendelssohn eliminated movement breaks in his larger works — he had done the same in his “Scottish” Symphony — but in this concerto, he takes it a step further by inserting short connecting passages between the movements. After the first movement, a single note held by a solo bassoon provides a link to the beautiful Andante, and a brief melodic passage serves as a bridge between the second and third movements. The speed of this latter passage, scored for solo violin and string orchestra, is halfway between the preceding slow and subsequent fast tempos. The various moods and sentiments — those of the passionate first movement, the lyrical second, and the graceful third — all flow directly from one another, instead of existing as separate entities. 

The written-out cadenza of the first movement (which may be in part by David) is also more strongly integrated into the movement than was the case in earlier concertos. Mendelssohn moved it from its traditional place at the end of the movement to the middle, allowing it to grow organically out of the development section and naturally resolve in the recapitulation. But the cadenza does not end when the orchestra reenters; it continues while the flute, oboe, and first violins play the main theme — another example of the seamless transitions that were so important to Mendelssohn. 

The triumph of this work may have been best expressed by the great violinist Joseph Joachim in 1906: “The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest — and the one that makes the fewest concessions — is Beethoven’s. Brahms’s is the closest to Beethoven’s in seriousness. Bruch’s [First] is the richest and the most enchanting. But the dearest of all — the heart’s jewel — is Mendelssohn’s.” 

— Peter Laki 

Peter Laki is a musicologist and frequent lecturer on classical music. He is a visiting associate professor of music, emeritus, at Bard College and was The Cleveland Orchestra’s program annotator from 1990 to 2007.