Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto – breaking the barriers

Zelman Memorial Symphony Orchestra will be performing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto on Saturday 7 December at 7.30pm, at Camberwell Grammar School. As you listen to our brilliant young soloist, Nicholas Feng, spin its beautiful melodies for you, you may not be aware that this piece is revolutionary!

A classical concerto usually adheres to a certain form. We use the word ‘classic’ because the structure of classical music was based on Greek classical thinking, namely rhetoric. To illustrate, an idea is put forth (in music, this is called the first subject), then another idea is proposed (the second subject). The ideas are tossed around back and forth (the development section) and then united to prove a point (the recapitulation).

In a concerto, the orchestra begins by playing the main tunes as a sort of summary of what is to come. The soloist introduces both the first and second subject tunes and the ones in the recapitulation. After the recapitulation, the soloist plays an unaccompanied cadenza that is like an improvisation based on what we have just heard.

Mendelssohn smashes this structure in every way. The soloist enters a mere bar and a half after the orchestra. The second subject is played by the woodwinds accompanied the soloist playing the lowest note on the violin for over eight bars. (No tune for the soloist? Cheeky!) The cadenza is heard before the recapitulation, and the soloist, again, does not play the tune at the beginning of the recapitulation.

As that wasn’t enough, Mendelssohn joins all the three movements together as one large whole, aimed to prevent the audience of the day from clapping between movements. But if you are enjoying Nicholas’s performance, I’m sure he wouldn’t object to a spontaneous display of appreciation!