As musical geniuses go, you don’t get much more genius than Felix Mendelssohn. Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Hamburg in 1809, Felix was deeply involved in music from an early age; by the time he was fourteen, he had written twelve string symphonies. In 1821 his piano teacher, Carl Zelter, introduced the eleven year old Felix to the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was then in his seventies. Goethe was greatly impressed by him, leading to a memorable conversation between Goethe and Zelter comparing Felix with the young Mozart, whom Goethe had also witnessed, many years before:
“Musical prodigies…are probably no longer so rare; but what this little man can do in extemporising and playing at sight, borders the miraculous, and I could not have believed it possible at so early an age.”
“And yet you heard Mozart in his seventh year at Frankfurt?” said Zelter.
“Yes“, answered Goethe, “…but what your pupil already accomplishes, bears the same relation to the Mozart of that time that the cultivated talk of a grown-up person bears to the prattle of a child.”
The grown-up Mendelssohn had a good friend and collaborator in violin virtuoso and composer, Ferdinand David. The two had met as late teenagers in the late 1820s in Berlin where Felix was already an accomplished composer and Ferdinand was a violinist in the orchestra at the Königsstädtisches Theatre. In a remarkable coincidence, it was discovered that the two had been born in the exact same house in Hamburg, a year apart!
A few years later, in the summer of 1838, Mendelssohn wrote to his friend: “I should like to write a violin concerto for you next winter. One in E minor runs through my head, the beginning of which gives me no peace.” In the end, it took him another six years to complete it, regularly consulting David about violin technique. Ever the perfectionist, Mendelssohn continually made minor adjustments to the concerto, right up to its premiere in Leipzig on March 13, 1845. The concerto became an instant classic and remains one of the cornerstones of the repertoire, being the most frequently performed violin concertos in history.
So I give you Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, performed by Ray Chen and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and if you can free up the twenty nine minutes required to wallow in its total glory, you will find it a worthwhile experience, believe me.
