James Ehnes & Beethoven

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• Beethoven’s Violin Concerto is now firmly accepted as one of the greats of the repertoire, but it didn’t start out that way. Unlike many other pieces by the great composer, it certainly didn’t become an instant hit. Beethoven rattled off the concerto in remarkably short time. He took just a few weeks to compose it in the winter of 1806, and it was premiered within days of its completion on December 23. This was a fairly rushed affair. The soloist hadn’t had time to learn his part, so spent a good deal of the concert sight-reading. It’s hard to imagine Beethoven being too pleased with such an approach.

• Following his catastrophic two-month marriage to former student Antonina Miliukova, Tchaikovsky started on his fourth symphony. After emerging from a profound period of writer’s block, struggling with his sexuality and battling with a heavy bout of depression, it probably comes as no surprise that the music is urgent, supercharged and violent at points. Even the opening bars of the first movement are intended to represent a metaphor for Fate, or, as Tchaikovsky put it: “the fatal power which prevents one from attaining the goal of happiness.”