It was March of 1878, and 37-year-old Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky found himself in Clarens, Switzerland, desperately trying to forget the events of the previous year of his life. Years of struggle to suppress or deny his homosexuality had led him, 8 months prior, to a desperate decision to marry one of his female students. Unsurprisingly, the marriage was doomed, and Tchaikovsky had moved out of the couple’s apartment after less than 3 months, fleeing Moscow. Following months of travel, he had landed in Clarens at the estate of his benefactress Nadezhda von Meck. Unable to secure a divorce, he found himself depressed and unable to focus on composing.

His mood was lightened by a visit from his friend, and likely lover, the violinist Yosif Kotek. Tchaikovsky had been infatuated with Kotek, who was 15 years his junior, since Kotek had arrived to study violin and composition at the Moscow Conservatory. What had begun as a teacher/student relationship had apparently progressed, and Tchaikovsky had even written to his own brother on multiple occasions expressing his love for the young man. Kotek arrived in Clarens with a suitcase full of music, and he and Tchaikovsky spent the following days reading through various works for violin and piano. One of the pieces they played was the Symphonie espagnole by Édouard Lalo, which apparently ignited Tchaikovsky’s interest in the idea of writing his own large work for violin and orchestra. Tchaikovsky began work on his concerto immediately and, to his delight, found that progress was quick. Kotek offered advice on the technical aspects of violin playing, and learned the work day by day as each page of the score was finished. The entire process, including a complete rewrite of the second movement, took a mere 11 days.

Not wanting to draw further attention to his relationship with Kotek, Tchaikovsky dedicated the concerto to the great violinist Leopold Auer, who was quite taken aback when presented with the finished work, already in print. Unfortunately, Auer felt that the violin part needed to be reworked, and declined to play the premiere. Tchaikovsky was crestfallen, writing that having the work rejected by such an authority “had the effect of casting this unfortunate child of my imagination into the limbo of the hopelessly forgotten.” Two years would pass before the young violinist Adolf Brodsky and the Vienna Philharmonic would premiere the piece in December, 1881 - an event that was a well-documented disaster. The combination of an under-rehearsed orchestra and parts that were riddled with mistakes, resulted in a review so scathing that Tchaikovsky never got over it. The frequently grumpy critic Eduard Hanslick wrote that “Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto for the first time confronts us with the hideous idea that there may be compositions whose stink one can hear.” Fortunately, there were several additional performances which were much more successful, and Auer himself eventually taught the piece to his students. The work, utilizing Auer’s revisions, has since become a beloved staple of the romantic repertoire for the violin.

Listening to the first movement, it is clear why Leopold Auer was reluctant to take it on. The movement is enormous, almost symphonic in scope, and places the type of daunting technical demands on the soloist that would undoubtedly have given any violinist pause. The sweet introductory melody in the orchestra’s violins gives no indication of what is to come, a powerful movement that is overflowing with Tchaikovsky’s gift for melody, combined with breathtaking virtuoso passages that push the violin and the violinist to their limits. The extended cadenza in the middle is Tchaikovsky’s own, and here he truly pulls out all the stops, requiring the soloist to navigate the extreme registers of the instrument in Herculean feats of violin wizardry. A breakneck race to the end of the movement inevitably leaves audiences awestruck and soloists needing a moment to recover!

The term Canzonetta means short song in Italian, and the concerto’s second movement is indeed a lovely, melancholy aria, introduced by a woodwind choir, in the tradition of Italian art song. Here Tchaikovsky allows the soloist to simply revel in the gorgeous melody, with only a spare accompaniment in the orchestra. The movement provides the perfect respite before the brilliance of the final movement which begins without pause at the Canzonetta’s conclusion. The Finale is a high-spirited rondo bursting with the energy of Russian folk music. The orchestra offers a raucous introduction, and then the soloist takes over with another cadenza which serves to further build the anticipation. The exuberant dance music that follows predates the Russian Sailor’s Dance from Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker by 15 years, yet it has the same energy and high spirits that have kept his ballet music beloved for over a century. Tchaikovsky clearly knew how to party, and this movement is a non-stop celebration for soloist and orchestra, and a testament to the resiliency of the composer’s spirit. Although the personal drama of the previous year may have knocked him down, Tchaikovsky had endured, and brilliantly rediscovered his capacity for joyous musicmaking.