Violin Concerto (Barber)
Samuel Barber's violin concerto, Op. 14, is a work in three movements lasting about 22 minutes and completed in 1939.
History
In 1939 Philadelphia industrialist Samuel Fels commissioned Barber to write a violin concerto for Fels' adopted son, Iso Briselli, who had graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music the same year as Barber (1934). Barber took his advance and went to Switzerland to work on the concerto. When he presented the first two movements of the concerto to the 27-year-old Briselli, Briselli objected that the work was not turning out the way he wanted. Briselli had wanted a virtuoso showpiece, and thought that the two brooding movements Barber had given him were not flashy enough. Then, when Barber delivered the third movement, a brilliant perpetuum mobile, Briselli complained that the finale was unplayable. (In later years he said that his objection was musical, not technical.) At that point, Fels asked for his advance to be returned. Barber answered that he had spent the money on his composing trip to Switzerland.
Then Ralph Berkowitz, at that time the Curtis Institute's staff pianist, helped proved Briselli wrong. He found a young violin student, Herbert Baumel, in the Curtis Common Room. Baumel was known to be an excellent sight reader, and Berkowitz asked Baumel to study the finale for a couple of hours, then to join him in pianist Josef Hofmann's studio. After reviewing the music, Baumel went to the studio to discover an audience of Barber (now teaching at Curtis), Gian Carlo Menotti, Mary Louise Curtis Bok (founder of the Curtis Institute), and a friend of Mrs. Bok; with ease Baumel proved that the finale was, indeed, "playable". The point made, an agreement was reached: Barber returned half the commission fee and Briselli gave up all performance rights to the concerto.
In the liner notes to her 2000 recording of the work, Hilary Hahn adds:
- Herbert Baumel performed the concerto in the 1939–1940 season as soloist with the symphony orchestra of the Curtis Institute, conducted by Fritz Reiner. That performance brought the piece to the attention of Eugene Ormandy, who soon scheduled its official premiere in a pair of performances by Albert Spalding with the Philadelphia Orchestra in the Academy of Music in February of 1941. [The actual premiere was on February 7.] Those performances were followed on February 11, 1941, by a repeat performance in Carnegie Hall, and from that point, the piece rapidly entered the standard violin and orchestral repertoire. In fact, the Barber Violin Concerto has become one of the most frequently performed of all twentieth-century concertos.
Form of the Work
Barber provided these program notes for the premiere performance:
- The first movement — allegro molto moderato — begins with a lyrical first subject announced at once by the solo violin, without any orchestral introduction. This movement as a whole has perhaps more the character of a sonata than concerto form. The second movement — andante sostenuto — is introduced by an extended oboe solo. The violin enters with a contrasting and rhapsodic theme, after which it repeats the oboe melody of the beginning. The last movement, a perpetual motion, exploits the more brilliant and virtuosic character of the violin.
The concerto is scored for two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets; timpani; snare; piano; and strings.