Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major, Op. 77

Program notes

About the Work

The Violin Concerto, composed in the summer of 1878, was Brahms’s only work for solo violin and orchestra, and it ranks among the supreme achievements of the concerto literature. It was written for Joseph Joachim, his oldest musical friend. The two had known each other for a quarter century by then, and their artistic partnership was one of the most fruitful in musical history.

Brahms wrote it at Pörtschach in Carinthia and sent the solo part to Joachim, asking him, with characteristic understatement, simply to “say a word or write a few words about the part.” What followed was an intensive collaboration by correspondence: Joachim suggested revisions to make passages more idiomatic for the violin, and Brahms weighed them, taking some and setting others aside.

Originally, Brahms planned four movements, but he eventually settled on the traditional three, discarding two middle movements. (The ideas from one of them reportedly resurfaced in his Second Piano Concerto.) The premiere took place on New Year’s Day 1879 at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, with Joachim as soloist and Brahms conducting.

The concerto’s early reception was troubled. A quip attributed both to the conductor Hans von Bülow and to the violinist Joseph Hellmesberger called it a concerto not for but against the violin. The virtuoso Henryk Wieniawski called it unplayable, and Pablo de Sarasate refused to perform it, protesting that he would not “stand on the rostrum and listen to the oboe playing the only tune in the Adagio.” Yet the work has long since taken its place alongside the Beethoven and Mendelssohn concertos as one of the supreme tests and glories of the violinist’s art.

I. Allegro non troppo: A spacious orchestral introduction presents the main themes before the violin enters with a broad, singing melody. The movement unfolds with symphonic grandeur, the solo part woven into the orchestral fabric rather than set against it. The first-movement cadenza is traditionally Joachim’s, though many violinists have composed their own.

II. Adagio: An oboe intones one of Brahms’s most beautiful melodies, the tune Sarasate refused to sit through. The violin takes up the theme with exquisite tenderness, and the movement unfolds as a reverie of autumnal warmth.

III. Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace: A Hungarian-flavored finale, widely heard as a tribute to the Hungarian-born Joachim. Its vigorous rhythms and folk-like themes bring the concerto to a brilliant close.

Listen for: The grandeur of the orchestral introduction, establishing the concerto’s symphonic character from the start. In the slow movement, the famous oboe melody that so irritated Sarasate, though the violin’s elaboration of it is equally beautiful. The finale’s Hungarian spirit reflects Brahms’s lifelong love of Hungarian popular music and his friendship with Joachim.