Violin Concerto (Sessions)

Roger Sessions' Violin Concerto was composed between 1927 and 1935, and is scored for violin and orchestra (without violins).

The concerto was begun, at the suggestion of Serge Koussevitzky, in the summer of 1927—although the composer later postdated the beginning of this work to his years at the American Academy in Rome in 1928 and 1929,—and was completed in 1935. It was originally meant to have been premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra during their 1932–33 season, with Richard Burgin as soloist, but Sessions did not finish the finale—originally to have been the third movement—in time. Ultimately deciding on a four-movement form, Sessions delivered the violin part to Burgin in the fall of 1934, while still orchestrating the last movement, and Koussevitzky agreed to program the concerto during the first half of the 1935–36 season. When Sessions expressed a preference for a better-known violinist, Burgin graciously stepped aside and Joseph Szigeti was named as the probable soloist. The Concerto was finally completed in San Francisco in August 1935, and the premiere was scheduled to take place in November 1936, but the now-intended soloist, Albert Spalding, asked for a postponement and requested that Sessions compose a new finale. Sessions declined and released the violinist of his obligation to perform the concerto. Spalding could not master the violin part, especially the "punishingly fast" tarantella finale, and the performance was cancelled at the last minute. The concerto was finally given its first performance with a professional orchestra by Louis Krasner and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos, on November 14, 1947, though an earlier performance had been given in Chicago on January 8, 1940, by Robert Arthur Gross, the WPA Illinois Symphony Orchestra, and Izler Solomon, and Gross also performed the first two movements in 1941 with the National Youth Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski.

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