Sibelius’s D-minor Violin Concerto towers as an icy summit in the instrument’s literature. But Sibelius and the violin are connected in other ways, too. He aspired to become a violin virtuoso himself but unfortunately fixed on that goal too late for it to be feasible.
When he embarked on violin lessons he was 14 years old. By that age many virtuosos-in-training are already seasoned players, and the provincial instruction available to Sibelius, combined with his tendency toward stage fright, limited his progress.
Still, he became accomplished enough to play in the Vienna Conservatory’s orchestra when he was a student there, in 1890–91, and he even auditioned (unsuccessfully) for a chair in the Vienna Philharmonic.
Sibelius enriched his instrument’s repertoire by quite a few works apart from the concerto. He worked on a second violin concerto in 1915, but abandoned it far from com-pletion, recycling his sketches into his Sixth Symphony. He composed numerous works for violin and piano, including a Sonata (1889) and a Sonatina (Op. 80, 1915), as well as many items grouped into collections of short movements.
Sibelius would complete his final composition in 1927 and in his last three decades limited his musical creativity to tin- kering with extant pieces and making stabs at works that would never come to fruitio
Here is violinist Janine Jansen to play this wonderful concerto for you:
