Violin Concerto in d minor, Op. 47

• Sibelius composed this concerto in 1903-4, and it premiered in Helsinki on February 8, 1904. The soloist was Victor Nováček. Sibelius revised the concerto the next year, and the revised version premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Richard Strauss in Berlin on October 19, 1905. On this occasion the soloist was Karel Halíř.¹
• The original premiere was not very successful, partly because Victor Nováček was not up to the task of performing as a concert violinist (he was only a local violin teacher).²
  • Sibelius had discussed having Willy Burmester, the concertmaster of the orchestra in Helsingfors, and the work’s original dedicatee, play the premiere. Burmester was a strong supporter of Sibelius, and he loved the score. Sources differ on why exactly Burmester didn’t get to play the premiere, but most that I have read blame Sibelius for moving the premiere (possibly for financial reasons) to a time and place where Burmester could not play. 
  • Burmester also offered to play the revised work’s premiere in Berlin, but Sibelius again let the part go to someone else, and also changed the work’s dedication to violinist Ferenc von Vecsey.  
  • For what it’s worth, Sibelius’s alcoholism was a severe problem during the period he was working on the Violin Concerto, and he was not functioning at his best. 

“Wonderful! Masterly! Only once before have I spoken in such terms to a composer, and that was when Tchaikovsky showed me his concerto.”

Willy Burmester, upon seeing a draft of Sibelius’s violin concerto³

“All of my twenty-five years’ stage experience, my artistry and insight will be at the service of this work. . . . I shall play the concerto in Helsingfors in such a way that the city will be at your feet.”

Willy Burmester, in 1904, offering to play the revised version of the concerto.⁴

• Sibelius had studied the violin as a teenager, and had wanted to become a violinist, but was unable to do so (likely because he started too late and didn’t have adequate instructors). Sibelius said that when he 14, “the violin took me by storm, and for the next ten years it was my dearest wish, my overriding ambition, to become a great virtuoso.”⁵

1. Fabian Dahlström and James Hepokoski, “Sibelius, Jean,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000043725.
2. Michael Steinberg, “Program Notes: Sibelius Violin Concerto,” San Francisco Symphony (October 2017), accessed April 8, 2021, https://www.sfsymphony.org/Data/Event-Data/Program-Notes/S/Sibelius-Violin-Concerto.
3. Quoted in Ibid.
4. Quoted in Ibid.
5. Ibid.