Alban Berg dedicated his Violin Concerto 'To the memory of an angel' after the death of Manon Gropius, the 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius, who died from polio in April 1935.
Compositional Technique
Brahms's Violin Concerto was originally planned as a four-movement work, but he acceded to Joseph Joachim's wishes and abandoned the middle movements, replacing them with a 'feeble Adagio'.
Composition History
Alban Berg's Violin Concerto was commissioned by the Ukrainian-born American violinist Louis Krasner in February 1935, offering a fee of 1,500 dollars.
Interpretation
Renaud Capuçon dedicates this recording to the memory of Christian Ferras, a great French violinist who made a legendary recording of the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Wiener Philharmoniker in 1954.
Compositional Technique
The symphonic structure of Brahms's Violin Concerto, which includes a 90-bar orchestral introduction and a somewhat tentative entry for the soloist, led some to call it his 'fifth symphony'.
Performer Biography
Renaud Capuçon, the violinist on this recording, has returned to playing the Brahms and Berg concertos every season since he first performed them publicly in 1997.
Composition History
Johannes Brahms composed his Violin Concerto in D major in the early summer of 1878, modeling it on Beethoven's concerto and writing it for his friend, the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim.
