Violin Concerto (Khachaturian)

Violin Concerto
by Aram Khachaturian
Key	D minor
Composed	1940 (1940)
Performed	16 November 1940 (1940-11-16)
Movements	3

Aram Khachaturian's Violin Concerto in D minor is a violin concerto in three movements composed in 1940. It was composed for David Oistrakh and was premiered on 16 November 1940 by Oistrakh.

Composition

In 1940, Khachaturian was enjoying tremendous professional success and personal joy. He worked on the concerto in the tranquility of a wood composer's retreat west of Moscow; he said of the composition that he "worked without effort ... Themes came to me in such abundance that I had a hard time putting them in order." Many sections of the concerto are reminiscent of the folk music of Khachaturian's native Armenia—while he never directly quotes a specific folk melody, "the exotic Oriental flavor of Armenian scales and melodies and the captivating rhythmic diversity of dances" are throughout the work. The work has been charactered by "an exhilarating rhythmic drive and vitality, and a penchant for intoxicating, highly flavored, languorous melody owning much to the inflections of his native Armenian folk music." Having won the Stalin prize in 1941, it has since become one of Khachaturian's famous pieces, in spite of considerable criticism.

Structure

Violin concerto in D minor (1940)

• First movement: Allegro con fermezza (about 14 minutes)
• Second movement: Andante sostenuto (about 12 minutes)
• Third movement: Allegro vivace (about 9 minutes)

A movement in sonata form, the Allegro con fermezza opens with a melody that has been described as "energetic" a "rollicking dance-like theme," and this yields to a "more lyrical" secondary melody.

The Andante sostenuto has been described as "a rhapsodic slow movement that sweeps one into a brooding wintry landscape." Geoffrey Norris wrote, "The ease and spontaneity, pungency and flexibility of Khachaturian's melodic inventions are most clearly laid out in the Andante sostenuto of the central movement, cast in a free-flowing, quasi-improvisatory manner redolent of the art of Armenian folk music." The second movement is a free-flowing rondo.

The concluding Allegro vivace has been called "a whirlwind of motion and virtuosity." In this movement, "the folks element is specially pronounced in the dance-like vigor of the main melody and in the repetitive, insistent, wild virtuosity of the solo instrument."

Discography

Year	Soloist	Conductor	Orchestra
1946	David Oistrakh	Alexander Gauk	USSR State Symphony Orchestra
1947	Gerhard Taschner	Artur Rother	Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra
1955	David Oistrakh	Aram Khachaturian	National Philharmonic Orchestra
1956	Ruggiero Ricci	Anatole Fistoulari	London Philharmonic Orchestra (stereo)
1964	Henryk Szeryng	Antal Doráti	London Symphony Orchestra
1967	David Oistrakh	Aram Khachaturian	Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra
1984	Itzhak Perlman	Zubin Mehta	Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
1989	Valery Klimov	Evgeni Svetlanov	USSR Academy Symphony Orchestra
1990	Lydia Mordkovitch	Neeme Järvi	Royal Scottish National Orchestra
2004	Julia Fischer	Yakov Kreizberg	Russian National Orchestra
2007	Aaron Rosand	Kees Bakels	Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra
2007	Catherine Manoukian	Eduard Topchjan	Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra
2008	Nicolas Koeckert	José Serebrier	Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
2010	Ara Malikian	Jesús Amigo	Extremadura Symphony Orchestra
2011	Mikhail Simonyan	Kristjan Järvi	London Symphony Orchestra
2014	James Ehnes	Mark Wigglesworth	Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
2018	Nemanja Radulović	Sascha Goetzel	Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra
2019	Rachel Barton Pine	Teddy Abrams	Royal Scottish National Orchestra
2020	Antje Weithaas	Daniel Raiskin	Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie