Alexander Glazunov composed the Violin Concerto in A minor Opus 82 in 1904–5 when he was at the height of his fame in Russia. It was premiered on 15 February 1905 in St Petersburg at a concert of the Russian Music Society, conducted by the composer, with the great violinist Leopold Auer (to whom it is dedicated) as the soloist.
It was Auer’s fourteen-year-old pupil Mischa Elman who gave the first performances outside Russia in the same year, helping to build the work’s international reputation. Hans Keller claimed that Glazunov’s treatment of the solo violin’s character made the work ‘something quite unique … a violin concerto which could have been written by a fiddler, even though he himself didn’t play the instrument … Glazunov created an almost perfect concerto—instrumentally, the best I know amongst pianists’ violin concertos’.
It is certainly the case that Glazunov wrote his own brilliantly effective cadenza for the concerto and there is no question that this is a superbly imagined work with the solo part beautifully integrated into the overall design.
Here is violinist Julia Fischer who demonstrates the lyrical aspects of this composition:
