Mendelssohn Concerto für Violine und Streichorchester d-moll MWV O3 Ausgabe für Violine und Klavier

Felix Mendelssohn wrote his first violin concerto long before his E minor concerto from 1845: as a 13-year-old in his parents' home in Berlin. The young Felix drew on two sources for this work from 1822: the art of his admired violin teacher Eduard Rietz and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Mendelssohn's early fondness for concertos and concert pieces in the key of D minor stemmed from the latter's D minor Piano Concerto, which he played with great enthusiasm. He wrote three D minor concertos alone between 1820 and 1823, and another - his Second Piano Concerto - in 1837. The ‘Sturm und Drang’ of Bach's D minor Concerto, its motoric and toccata-like passages, left their mark on all of these works, but especially on the early D minor Violin Concerto with String Orchestra.

Mendelssohn's early work is also a memorial to the Berlin violinist Eduard Rietz, who died in 1832 at the age of 29. The Rode pupil was the young Felix's violin teacher and friend, as well as the founder of the Berlin Philharmonic Society and, as concertmaster, the driving force behind the so-called ‘Sunday Music’ in the Mendelssohn household. For this Sunday concert series, half of Berlin made a pilgrimage to the banker family's garden house at Leipziger Strasse 3 - exactly where the German Federal Council meets today. The family did not move in until 1825, but Rietz probably also played his pupil Felix's violin concerto there. It is preserved in two versions: a two-movement early version and the final three-movement version, which appears in this edition by Yehudi Menuhin. The opening movement with Bachian rhythms is followed by a lyrical andante full of Mendelssohnian sound magic and a rondo in gavotte rhythm, in which Rietz was allowed to shine in the style of Spohr and Rode.