Sibelius' Violin Concerto

It has been a while since i wrote about music, but today I am listening to this fantastic version of Sibelius' Violin Concerto i d-minor, so I thought I'd share it with you.

The concert is extremely difficult for the solo-violin, full of fast runs, haunting cadenzas and complex harmonic double stops. But it is also one of the most raw and beautiful orchestral pieces. I especially love the theme that opens the concert. A beautiful, melancholic, but strangely cold and harsh tune that gives more than enough to work with in the long and brilliant first movement.

The theme of the second movement is also a fascinating and beautiful tune. I hear more of the romantic streak that is typical in Sibelius' early works and which flavoured all of his oeuvre. It is somehow typical of Nordic art that it both has this tendency towards feeling and rejects sentimentality at the same time.

The third movement is a wonderful dance theme, like the other movements devilishly hard to play.

I have chosen two versions. All the young virtuosi have played it and there is a lot of fine versions on youtube, but I have gone for Oistrakh's version as the first, as that was the one I heard when starting to write this.

The second version I have found might have a dubious sound quality, but is sharp, fluid and unsentimental by the only 19 year old Pekka Kuusisto.