Nielsen, Carl

Carl Nielsen – Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, op. 33

(b. Nørre Lyndelse, 9 June 1865 – d. Copenhagen, 2 October 1931)

(1911)

Preface

In June 1911, having just completed his Third Symphony (the “Sinfonia Espansiva”), Nielsen accepted an invitation from Nina Grieg, the widow of the great Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, to spend a month in her husband’s former country house in Troldhaugen and work on his latest compositions. At that time the forty-six-year-old composer had, surprisingly, never written a concerto, although, as he put in a letter to his admirer Max Brod, “almost every year for the last twenty-five years I have considered writing a concerto for the violin.” It was thus to a concerto that he now turned his attention. Nielsen enjoyed the pleasure of facing up to the new challenge. In one of his letters from this period we can read: “I myself am working on my concerto, slowly but quite steadily; the task is actually difficult and therefore satisfying. The fact of the matter is that it must be good music and still take into account the display of the solo instrument in the best light, that is, eventful, popular, and brilliant without being superficial. These are contradictions that can and must meet and fuse into a higher unity. It amuses me no end.”
The new work would become the Violin Concerto, op. 33, which, after a difficult gestation, he completed in Copenhagen on 13 December of that same year.

Nielsen’s obvious joy in facing up to challenges was typical of a man who could claim that the very best artists throughout history “always gave their age a black eye.” In fact, the Violin Concerto refuses to accept many generic conventions. Rather than following the three-movement form typical of the genre ever since the days of Mozart, Nielsen looked back even further for the formal design of his work – namely, to the age of the sonata da chiesa. The piece is thus laid out in two contrasting large-scale parts, each consisting of an enormous slow introduction followed by an equally large fast movement in heavily modified sonata-allegro form. (The connection with the Baroque sonata da chiesa is perhaps consciously reinforced by a quotation of the name B-A-C-H in the solo violin at the opening of Part II.) The final result looked somewhat as follows:

Part I
Introduction – Praeludium
A (mm. 1-23) – B (mm. 24-35) – A (mm. 36-41) – Codetta (mm. 42-46)
Allegretto cavalleresco
Exposition:
First thematic area (mm. 47-98)
Second thematic area (mm. 99-130)
Concluding material (mm. 131-58)
Development (mm. 159-227)
Cadenza (mm. 228-256)
Recapitulation:
First thematic area (mm. 257-94)
Second thematic aria (mm. 295-340)
Coda (mm. 341 – end)
Part II
Introduction: A (mm. 1-39) – B (mm. 40-73)
Sonata rondo – Allegretto scherzando
A – First thematic area (mm. 74-116)
B – Second thematic area (mm. 117-164)
Development: A (mm. 165-82) – C (mm. 183-350) – Retransition
(mm. 351-77) – Cadenza (mm. 378-445)
A – First thematic area (mm. 446-68)
B – Second thematic area (mm. 469-484)
Coda (mm. 485 – end)

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Read full preface / Vorwort > HERE