Description
At the age of just ten, the young Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was studying not only the piano and the basics of composition, but also the violin. In 1819–20, he composed first short pieces for piano and violin, before going on to write his first violin concerto in 1822 for his violin teacher and close friend Eduard Rietz. Whether it was actually performed at the time is not documented.
However, two surviving autograph scores testify to the compositional precociousness of the thirteen-year-old. Because the manuscripts remained privately owned for a long time, this sibling work of the famous E-minor Concerto came to the attention of a wider audience only in the mid-twentieth century. Today, with its wonderful melodies and spirited finale, it would be impossible to imagine its absence from the concert hall.
Christoph Sobanski has, as always, prepared a readily playable piano reduction for this Urtext edition. The fingerings in the violin part were contributed by Antje Weithaas, to whom this concerto is particularly dear.
