St Petersburg, Concert Hall

Mendelssohn. Sibelius

Soloist: Alyona Baeva (violin)
Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Zaurbek Gugkaev

The programme includes:
Felix Mendelssohn
Violin Concerto in E Minor

Jean Sibelius
Violin Concerto in D Minor

The finest comment about the Violin Concerto by Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) could be the life itself of the composer and artist, idolised and called the “Mozart of the 19th century” by Schumann.
By the age of fifteen, Mendelssohn had composed numerous works in many genres. His teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter “in the name of Mozart, in the name of Haydn and in the name of the old man Bach” introduced Felix to his apprenticeship. Soon the overture A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1826) would bring the sixteen-year-old composer the laurels of immortality; the “apprentice” had become an acclaimed maestro.
At the age of twenty he breathed new life into Bach’s Matthäus-Passion. A grateful pupil, he revived Handel’s oratorios and for the first time performed Schubert’s long forgotten Symphony in C Major, The Great, which had been revived by Schumann. An honorary citizen of Leipzig, he founded the first conservatoire in Germany... Mendelssohn combined modern trends with traditions; the harmoniousness of his outlook made him a “classic” among the Romantic composers.
Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor (1844) stands alongside the brilliant concerti of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky... His music is filled with romantic ardour and impresses with its melodic beauty and surprisingly plastique form. The work, which appears to have been born in a single burst of inspiration, was planned over a lengthy period; the composer sought advice about the solo violin part from his friend Ferdinand David, an outstanding violinist and professor at the Leipzig Conservatoire. It was he who performed the premiere of the concerto in Leipzig on 27 March 1845.


With the appearance of Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) the music of Finland acquired a voice that became heard throughout the world. The deeply individual and unique style of composition he created, following in the footsteps of the great European maestri, also implemented rhythms and intonations of Finnish folk music and images of the mighty nature of the Land of a Thousand Lakes.
The Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47 was written by Sibelius in 1903.
According to the renowned conductor Leopold Stokowski, the only instrumental concerto Sibelius wrote is “one of the composer’s finest symphonies.” It is, inarguably, the most popular work by the Finnish genius.
The first part of the concerto which unfolds like a storyteller’s improvisation stands apart for the bleak “northern’ flavour of the orchestra and the passionate yet at the same time restrained lyricism. The virtuoso nature of the solo part blends naturally with the immense scale of the idea and serves to embody it. The second part is an inspired elegy – full of highly unusual melodic colour – which forms some of the most exalted pages of Romantic music ever written.
The temperamental and impetuous “playful” finale with an elastic and dotted rhythm embodies the nature of a folk dance. The first performance of the Violin Concerto took place on 8 February 1904 in Helsinki under the baton of the composer.
Iosif Raiskin

Age category 6+

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