Violin Concerto (Chávez)

Carlos Chávez's Violin Concerto is a work for violin and orchestra composed between 1945 and 1950 for the American violinist Viviane Bertolami. Originally 45 minutes in length, it was shortened soon after its first performance to a duration of approximately 35 minutes.

On 10 January 1947 Murray D. Kirkwood, a public-relations writer for IT&T in New York, wrote Chávez a letter requesting a violin concerto for the professional debut of his then-twenty-year-old wife, Viviane Bertolami. Chávez set to work right away (in fact, he had already begun to sketch a violin concerto in 1945, during a rail journey in the United States), but it was another three-and-a-half years before the score was completed, in July 1950. The concerto was premiered in Mexico City on 29 February 1952 by the composer conducting the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, with Viviane Bertolami as the soloist (García Morillo 1960, 135; Brodbeck 2015, 178, 184). Less than a month later, Chávez conducted the American premiere, again with Bertolami as soloist, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on 27 March 1952. By this time Chávez had shortened the concerto from the 45-minute version originally heard in Mexico City to just over 35 minutes (Brodbeck 2015, 192).

A decade later, Chávez succeeded in interesting the Polish-Mexican violinist Henryk Szeryng in the concerto, and eventually Szeryng gave the New York premiere, on 7 October 1965, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein. In August 1966 Szeryng recorded the concerto under the composer's baton, with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, for CBS Masterworks, though against the composer's wishes he cut twenty-five bars from the cadenza (Brodbeck 2015, 193–97).

Shortly after recording the concerto, Szeryng also gave its European premiere, at the Edinburgh Festival on 7 September 1966 in the Usher Hall, with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Loughran (Anon. 1966).

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