A failed violin virtuoso is responsible for what has surely become the most popular violin concerto composed in the twentieth century. Though he knew he would never play it himself, Sibelius poured into the Concerto all his love for the instrument and his understanding of its peculiar lyric qualities.

In September 1902 he wrote to his wife that he had just conceived “a marvelous opening idea” for a violin concerto, and if he was speaking of the way that the work actually begins in its finished form, “marvelous” is indeed the term to apply: against a hushed D minor chord played by the strings of the orchestra, tremolo, the soloist enters delicately on a dissonant note, yearning as it leans into the chord. The magic begins already during the first few seconds of the piece.

But it takes more than a wonderful opening idea to generate a large-scale work. Sibelius struggled with it for years. He drank heavily. He even virtually insulted the German violinist, Willy Burmester, who had encouraged him to write such a piece. In the 1890s, when Sibelius was beginning to make his mark as a composer, Burmester had spent some time as the concertmaster in Helsinki, and he had become an early champion of the budding composer. While working on the Concerto throughout 1903, Sibelius kept Burmester apprised of his progress, and when he sent him the completed work, Burmester was enraptured “Wonderful! Masterly!” he wrote. “Only once before have I spoken in such terms to a composer, and that was when Tchaikovsky showed me his concerto!” At one point Sibelius mentioned dedicating the work to Burmester, too.

The violinist proposed to premiere it in Berlin in March 1904, where his fame as a soloist would have guaranteed something of a splash. But Sibelius found himself in a fiscal emergency (and also perhaps unsure of himself, one of the consequences of his heavy drinking), and he scheduled a concert of his works in Helsinki, with the new Concerto as its centerpiece. But Burmester was unable to appear at that time. Instead, Sibelius made a choice that guaranteed failure, by offering the premiere to an undistinguished violin teacher named Viktor Nováček. (As difficult as the work is now, it was even more difficult in its first version.) Neither soloist nor orchestra were up to the demands of the piece, and one of the leading critics, Karl Flodin, a long-standing supporter of Sibelius, wrote that the Concerto was “a mistake.”

Nonetheless, Burmester wrote to Sibelius, generously overlooked the slight to himself, and offered again to play the piece in October 1904, nobly promising, “All my twenty-five years’ stage experience, my artistry and insight will be placed to serve this work . . . I shall play the concerto in Helsinki in such a way that the city will be at your feet!” But Sibelius was determined to revise the work before allowing another performance. He dawdled with the changes and finally brought himself face to face with his revisions in June 1905, when his publisher told him that he had gotten the Concerto scheduled in a prestigious concert series directed by Richard Strauss. But by this time, Burmester’s schedule was full and he was not available. The solo part was given to Karl Halíř. After the second slight, Burmester never played the piece that he had been the prime mover in bringing to creation.

The revisions to the Violin Concerto were far more drastic than simply touching up details of the scoring, such as composers usually undertake after a first round of rehearsals and performances of a new piece. Referring to what he considered the flaws in the work as his “secret sorrow,” Sibelius insisted that the revision would not be ready for two years (though in the end, he accomplished them in about a month once he really set to work). Sibelius evidently took Flodin’s critique of the first version very much to heart. He greatly reduced the amount of sheer virtuosic display in the solo part. The first movement had contained two solo cadenzas, the second of which was possibly inspired by Bach’s works for unaccompanied violin; it disappeared in the revision. He also shortened the finale. Only the slow movement, which met with general favor at the premiere, remains substantially unchanged. (It is always extremely interesting to hear an alternate version of a standard repertory work, because it gives us an insight into the composer’s own thought processes; fortunately we can now make a direct aural comparison between the two versions of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, because the original version has now been recorded by violinist Leonidas Kavakos with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Osmo Vänskä.) The original version was more dramatic, more rugged, closer perhaps to the spirit of Beethoven, and certainly more virtuosic. The final version of the Concerto, which has become established as one of the handful of most popular violin concertos of all time has more of a lyric quality without denying itself a strong symphonic development in the opening movement, a heartfelt song in the slow movement, or the wonderful galumphing dance (“evidently a polonaise for polar bears,” as Donald Francis Tovey once wrote) in the rondo of the finale. —© Steven Ledbetter