VIOLIN CONCERTO (THE LEEDS) op.441 (July 1992)

Published by: Highbridge Music Ltd
Commissioned by: The City of Leeds to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the granting of its charter as a city
Instrumentation: 2(=picc+afl).2(II=ca).2(II=bcl).2.cbsn - 4400 - timp - perc(1): tam-t/cyms/susp.cym/tgl/glsp - harp - strings
[Key to Abbreviations]
Duration: 35 mins
First Performance: Christiane Edinger The Northern Philharmonia conducted by Paul Daniel at Leeds Town Hall 6th February 1993.
Full score for hire
Study score for hire
Orchestral parts for hire

Christiane Edinger (solo violin), The Northern Philharmonia conducted by Paul Daniel. ASV CD DCA905 1994

Revelations ASV compilation CD 1997

Movements

• 1: Allegro Assai 19 minutes 54 seconds
  
• 2: Adagio 7 minutes 09 seconds
  
• 3: Allegro con Brio 5 minutes 33 seconds
  

Notes

Composer's note: In 1991 I composed and recorded a  'cantata' overnight as a challenge for the BBC TV programme 'Challenge Anneka'. It was done for a good cause, to help promote 'The Paralympics' and a large crowd of participants and fundraisers joined us at ITV in London to watch the first broadcast of it at 11.15pm that night April 17th. I found myself talking to Bernard Atha who ran the Arts in Leeds. He was amazed by it and wondered, since I could write a cantata overnight, whether I could compose a full-scale violin concerto for Nigel Kennedy in time for the centenary of Leeds in early 1993. I said that I had always longed to write such a work and would be delighted. Arrangements began but although I knew Nigel I couldn't get any response from either him or his agent at that time. Years later his manager wrote and said that when he moved offices he found my letter behind the radiator! That September I was visiting a music festival in a castle near Steyr in Austria and heard some terrific violin practise coming from the next room. I was so excited by the sound that I sat down and sketched out the opening theme of the concerto, taking it to the terrace where the violinist Christiana Edinger was having coffee. She said 'Let's try it' and our host Ilona von Ronay suggested that we go to Bruckner's house in the village where there was a good piano.  On playing it Christiane declared she would love to give the premiere. I began work and finished the orchestration the following July. Christiane then began rehearsing it, giving the first performance in February 1993.

My inner, personal motivation for composing the concerto was quite different. My mother, who had played and taught me the violin, had died in 1990 to my most heartfelt grief. On the title page of the concerto I placed a dedication 'To the memory of a most true and saintly soul'.

In 1995/6 I created a 3-act ballet with choreographer Robert North for The Gothenburg Opera House and Robert decided to use the first 2 movements of the violin concerto as scored. The 1st movement accompanied the young Eva's trials and tribulations in love affairs making a substantial part of Act 2. But the third act shows Eva as an old woman who dies and in an extraordinary coup de theatre all the other living characters freeze and Eva continues to move- now in the world of her 'after-life'.   Somehow sensing the nature of my slow movement he choreographed a dance this which proved memorably moving.

Performances

4th December 1997	Katerina Andreasson, The Philharmonia, Royal Festival Hall
December 1996	Lorraine McAslan, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Marble Hill Concerts
20th August 1994	Christiane Edinger, Howard Blake conducting The English Sinfonia (first London performance), Kenwood Lakeside Concerts
6th February 1993	English Northern Philharmonia / Christiane Edinger / Paul Daniel, Town Hall, Leeds

Reviews

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The ASV disc of the Violin Concerto has been written about with more insight than I can muster by Ian Lace. It was written for Nigel Kennedy but premiered by Christiane Edinger in Leeds whose city fathers commissioned the piece. It stands in the central pathway of the great English tradition of music for violin and orchestra. At various times its wondrously presented ideas sing out in exultant company with The Lark Ascending and with the concertos of Walton, Elgar and Delius. It is however no pastiche and is deeply affecting in its own right. I only mention these other works to give you some idea of the sound-world. There's a tender Adagio and an Allegro con brio that is chipper, exultantly pointed and light-on-the-feet. This work belongs among my favourite violin concertos alongside Prokofiev 1, the superb Ivanovs, the Sainsbury and the Sibelius.

jonathan woolf, Musicweb-international, 9/1/2010

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Christiane Edinger is the soloist in what proves to be an inspired performance, 'caught on the wing' to join a select group of very special first recordings made over the years. The work, written in the received tradition of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Walton and, more recently, Christopher Headington, has a ready and appealing melodic impulse, and the playng here is as intense and communicative as it is spontaneous. The slow movement, lke the haunting close of the opening movement, brings some exquisitely tender pianissimo playing from the soloist (matched by the orchestra), and she is equally at home in the vigorously extrovert dancing finale which has much in common with the last movement of Dvorak's concerto. The only snag is the very wide dynamic range of the recording: this means that the spectacular bursts of percussion interrupting the reverie which opens the first movement and which reappears at the climax of the Adagio, are almost overwhelming when one has set the volume level to accommodate the music's quieter moments. The microphones are not always entirely flattering to the solo violin; but, in spite of these criticisms, this recording is a heartwarming experience. A Month in the Country brings moments of comparable bitter-sweet elegiac feeling. It is most sensitively played, as is the brass Sinfonietta, sonorous and jolly by turns. In terms of overall concert-hall realism the recording is impressive and the CD is strongly recommended; it would have earned a Rosette were it not for the (not entirely insoluble) problem of accommodating both the loudest and the quietest music on a single volume setting for comfortable domestic listening.

The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs, 3/1/1995

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Inspired, intense, yet infused with spontaneous feeling. The first movement.. is very appealing. The performance brings a moment of utter magic when, after the solist's hauntingly introspective (written) cadenza, the alto flute floats the main theme exquisitely over gently violin arpeggios. The slow movement again brings a hushed opening, unforgettable when the violinist, following a big tutti, takes up the main theme on a thread of tone ending with a breathtaking pianissimo. The finale is in the best 'dancing' tradition of the great concertos from Mozart and Beethoven onwards.

Ivan March, Gramophone, 12/1994

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Not only has Blake created one of the most radiantly beautiful concertos ever written, wirth a slow movement of unsurpassed loveliness, he has shown that 'Modern' Music can be immediately enjoyable.

Classical Music, 12/1994

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This is unequivocally great music, accessible, expressive and often ravishingly beautiful.

The Strad,

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