Violin Concerto (Elgar)

Violin Concerto
by Edward Elgar
The composer in 1917
Key	B minor
Catalogue	Op. 61
Composed	1905 (1905)–1910
Dedication	Fritz Kreisler
Movements	3
Premiere
Date	10 November 1910 (1910-11-10)
Location	London

Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61, is one of his longest orchestral compositions, and the last of his works to gain immediate popular success.

The concerto was composed for the violinist Fritz Kreisler, who gave the premiere in London in 1910, with the composer conducting. Plans by the recording company His Master's Voice to record the work with Kreisler and Elgar fell through, and the composer made a recording with the teenaged Yehudi Menuhin that has remained in the catalogues since its first release in 1932.

Even though Elgar's music fell out of fashion in the middle of the twentieth century, and the concerto's reputation as one of the most difficult in the violin repertoire grew (because of its use of constant multiple-stopping, fast and unorthodox string crossings, and massive, rapid shifting around the instrument), it nevertheless continued to be programmed and played by acclaimed violinists. By the end of the 20th century, when Elgar's music was restored to the general repertoire, there had been more than twenty recordings of the concerto. In 2010, centenary performances of the concerto were given around the world.

Elgar had begun work on a violin concerto in 1890, but he was dissatisfied with it and destroyed the manuscript. In 1907 the violinist Fritz Kreisler, who admired Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, asked him to write a violin concerto. Two years earlier, Kreisler had told an English newspaper:

If you want to know whom I consider to be the greatest living composer, I say without hesitation Elgar... I say this to please no one; it is my own conviction... I place him on an equal footing with my idols, Beethoven and Brahms. He is of the same aristocratic family. His invention, his orchestration, his harmony, his grandeur, it is wonderful. And it is all pure, unaffected music. I wish Elgar would write something for the violin.

The Royal Philharmonic Society of London formally commissioned the concerto in 1909. Elgar, himself a violinist, called yet upon W. H. "Billy" Reed, leader of the London Symphony Orchestra, for technical advice while writing the concerto. Reed helped him with bowings, passage-work and fingerings, playing passages over and over again until Elgar was satisfied with them. Kreisler also made suggestions, some for making the solo part more brilliant and some for making it more playable. Before the premiere, Reed, with Elgar playing the orchestral part on the piano, played through the work at a private party.