Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35

• Tchaikovsky composed this concerto in the spring of 1878.  
• While working on this concerto, Tchaikovsky had assistance from his friend and former student, Iosif Kotek. Kotek test-played portions of the concerto as Tchaikovsky wrote it. Kotek may have offered technical advice as well. 
• Tchaikovsky dedicated this concerto to violinist Adolph Brodsky, who also performed the work’s premiere.  
• The concerto premiered in Vienna, on December 4, 1881.¹

“Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear.”

Influential music critic Eduard Hanslick, reacting to the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in the Neue freie Presse, December 5, 1881. Hanslick had strong opinions. He didn’t like Wagner either.²

1. Roland John Wiley, “Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il′yich,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed May 20, 2021,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051766.
2. Nicolas Slominsky and Peter Schickele, eds., The Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Music Since Beethoven‘s Time (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), 207.