Charles Stanford - Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 74 (1899)

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (30 September 1852 – 29 March 1924) was an Irish composer, music teacher, and conductor. Born to a well-off and highly musical family in Dublin, Stanford was educated at the University of Cambridge before studying music in Leipzig and Berlin. He was instrumental in raising the status of the Cambridge University Musical Society, attracting international stars to perform with it.

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Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 74 (1899, October)
Dedication" To my friend E.F. Arbós (Enrique Fernández Arbós (1863–1939))

1. Allegro (0:00)
2. Canzona. Andante (17:46)
3. Allegro moderato (30:24)

Anthony Marwood, violin and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins

As an experienced conductor, Stanford had performed numerous violin concertos (Mendelssohn, Vieuxtemps, Joachim, Mackenzie, Spohr, Bruch, Saint-Säens and Brahms) at Cambridge and in London, many of them with Joachim. He was, therefore, more than familiar with the ethos of the ‘grand’ Romantic concerto with its distinctive admixture of display and passion; yet, taking his lead from Brahms, Stanford was never tempted to sacrifice intellectual control in favour of pure athleticism and showmanship. The Violin Concerto in D, dedicated ‘to my friend E. F. Arbós’ was composed during October and November 1899. It was first performed under Stanford’s direction with Arbós and the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra on 7 March 1901. Little critical notice appears to have been taken at the time, but the work was given a much more auspicious profile when it was played at the Leeds Festival on 7 October 1904, with no less a virtuoso than Fritz Kreisler. The following spring, the American violinist (Serge) Achille Rivarde, also a professor at the RCM, was the executant in a third performance at the Philharmonic Society (again under Stanford’s direction) which was enthusiastically received. Yet, in spite of its critical acclaim as a ‘vigorous and original’ work – indeed Parry considered it among Stanford’s finest utterances – it did not establish itself in the canon of popular concertos. Stanford heard his work a final time at the RCM on 12 July 1918 when it was performed by the highly prodigious Margaret Harrison.

Stanford conceived his Violin Concerto on a grand scale. The first movement is a substantial musical structure full of striking ideas, written in a form he had already explored in his First Piano Concerto Op 59 (recorded on Hyperion CDA66820) of 1894. An opening statement by orchestra and soloist gives way to a full orchestral tutti that paves the way for modulation to the new key. In this sense Stanford greatly preferred the Mendelssohnian form of the ‘shared’ sonata scheme rather than the older classical fusion of ritornello and sonata practised by Brahms (especially evident from the large-scale orchestral expositions of Brahms’s concertos). From D major, and the impassioned, almost yearning modal shift to the tonic minor, Stanford modulates to the relative (B minor) and proceeds with two shorter ideas – an initial lyrical outpouring followed by a wonderful fragment (in 3/2) played solely on the G string, and a more extensive lyrical melody shared between the soloist and orchestra. The development, like its expositional counterpart, is impressive in gesture and design. A dramatic statement from the orchestra of sixty bars (a residue of the classical orchestral tutti) gradually subsides into a quieter, more meditative episode which organically evolves into a new, rhapsodic theme. Gaining momentum, the opening idea of the concerto re-emerges and runs seamlessly and with great deftness into a full recapitulation of the lengthy exposition. The first movement is a magnificent example of Stanford’s instinctive lyrical impulse, but it is also a striking example of his imaginative orchestral palette. This is perhaps most notable in the delicate tone color of the woodwind figurations and pizzicato upper strings in the opening bars and the return of this delicate sound world in the coda, a feature noted by most critics of the time.

The slow movement, titled ‘Canzona’, is one of Stanford’s finest creations. As its title suggests, it is a tripartite song form, full of long, elegiac lines for the solo violin (which, like the ‘Ballade’ of the Suite, grows out of the composer’s evident delight in the dark timbre of the open G string). In fact the attenuated melodic aspect of the movement hides an impressive organic cohesion in which much of the material is based on the descending four-note figure heard at the opening (on clarinets and bassoons).
A ‘Gaelic air’ (marked by Stanford in the score, though its origin is unclear), replete with distinctive flattened seventh, is used for the rondo theme in the high-spirited finale.