Violin Concerto (Schumann)
| Violin Concerto | |
|---|---|
| by Robert Schumann | |
 |
|
| Key | D minor |
| Catalogue | WoO 23 |
| Period | Romantic |
| Genre | Concerto |
| Composed | 1853 |
| Movements | 3 |
| Scoring | Violin and orchestra |
| Premiere | |
| Date | 26 November 1937 |
| Location | Berlin |
Robert Schumann's Violin Concerto in D minor, WoO 23 was his only violin concerto and one of his last significant compositions, and one that remained unknown to all but a very small circle for more than 80 years after it was written.
The work is in three movements:
The concerto is in the traditional three-movement quick-slow-quick form. It belongs less to the poetic and passionate style of Schumann's early masterpieces than to the more objective, classical manner of his later music, as ushered in by the 'Rhenish' Symphony of 1850. Certainly the opening movement, which is in sonata form, is conceived more on symphonic than concertante lines. Its powerful opening subject dominates the proceedings, and although the violin’s role is extremely taxing, its subordination to a ‘symphonic’ scheme is emphasized by the fact that there is no cadenza. The second movement, in B flat, has the character of an intensely lyrical intermezzo, the theme of which hinting towards the Geistervariationen WoO 24, and passes without pause into a vigorous and dance-like sonata-rondo finale in the parallel major, D major. An unusual feature of the third movement is its strong polonaise rhythm.
Schumann wrote it in Düsseldorf between 11 September and 3 October 1853 for the violinist Joseph Joachim. He had just previously completed another work for Joachim, the Fantasie in C major, Op. 131. On 1 October, the young Johannes Brahms entered Schumann's life. It appears that Schumann composed the finale of the Concerto in three days: 1–3 October, after making Brahms’s acquaintance. Later in October, he collaborated with his new friend Brahms and his pupil Albert Dietrich in the 'F-A-E' Sonata for violin and piano, also written for Joachim.
Though Joachim performed Schumann’s Fantasie, he never performed the Violin Concerto. After playing it through with the Hannover Court Orchestra (of which Joachim was the concertmaster) for Schumann in October 1853, Joachim retained the manuscript for the rest of his life. After Schumann’s attempted suicide in February 1854 and subsequent decline and death in a sanatorium in Endenich, Joachim evidently suspected the Concerto was a product of Schumann’s madness and thought of the music as morbid. Joachim’s biographer Andreas Moser reproduced a letter in which Joachim discussed Schumann’s Concerto as showing ‘a certain exhaustion, which attempts to wring out the last resources of spiritual energy’, though ‘certain individual passages bear witness to the deep feelings of the creative artist’.
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