Violin Concerto in E Minor

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor belongs to the list of greatest concertos ever written and is a favorite with audiences and virtuosos alike. The maestro finished it in 1844. Its main theme had haunted him for a long time, and as he confessed to his friend Ferdinand David, for whom he wrote the piece, the “beginning…gave him no peace.”

That beginning, in fact, is one of the remarkable novelties that Mendelssohn incorporated into the composition. The violin begins without a long orchestral prelude, which was the common practice at the time. Instead, the solo violin plays the theme as the introduction, and semblances of it recur melodically and harmoniously through all three movements. The connectedness of the movements is itself a unique feature of the concerto and one of Mendelssohn’s innovations, as there is no break between the first and second movements, for example—the fagotto (bassoon) continues a note to link the parts.

This arc of suspense is masterfully captured and even enhanced by the remarkable soloist who performs this Music of the Week selection—Alina Ibragimova. The bliss that the music creates in the artist’s mind is plainly visible on her face and body. At times, she looks like she has gone into a state of “samadhi,” her third eye reading and reenacting the music, as it were, from the celestial projections inside her cranium.

The amazing Ibragimova, who was born in Russia and is of Tatar descent, carries her style—marked by authenticity and character—into many compelling performances of Classical and early Romantic music.