Composed: 1838 (begun), September 16, 1844 (completed). Première: Leipzig, March 13, 1845, Ferdinand David, soloist, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Niels Gade, conductor.

In 1836, the 26-year-old Ferdinand David became concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; the 27-year-old Felix Mendelssohn was its music director.  The two played chamber music together frequently, and the idea that Mendelssohn should compose a violin concerto for David seemed natural.  But the Berlin debacle of the 1840s proved an insurmountable obstacle.  With the 1843 opening of the Leipzig conservatory, which Mendelssohn headed, appointing David head of violin studies, circumstances began to seem favorable for the violin concerto.  Only after departing Berlin, followed by a tour of England, did Mendelssohn find leisure on a family retreat at a spa near Frankfurt to compose the Violin Concerto.  But the work was not complete until Mendelssohn consulted David on all technical matters concerning the violin.
    Compared to violin concerti by Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, the Mendelssohn violin concerto is innovative in many respects.  Mendelssohn reverses the convention of violin concerti beginning with an orchestral opening ritornello that is then followed by the soloist’s entrance: Mendelssohn begins with the soloist entering above a quiet yet intense accompaniment; the orchestra repeats this theme forte.  The effect is of one continuous crescendo that accumulates energy without interruption.  What follows is a transition theme that will be very important in every successive part of the movement, especially at the beginning of the development.  This highly chromatic theme has an urgent quality.  Each occurrence intensifies the musical action and seizes the listener creating the sensation of departure to an unknown destination.  The close of the development is remarkable in itself because the soloist plays an extraordinary cadenza that acts as a kind of bridge to the return of the principal theme.  Customarily, the cadenza is saved for the end of the movement, but the earlier placement in this case makes the second half of the movement more concentrated and intense.  Yet another unexpected bridge in the bassoon part connects the end of the first movement to the beginning of the second.
    If the first movement evokes many aspects of elegaic sentiment of surprising intensity, the second movement in C-major is, to quote S. N. Behrman, like “a little glass of warmth.”  It is reminiscent of the kind of composition found in Mendelssohn’s collection of piano pieces that he called Songs without Words.  Many of these pieces are well known including the Spring Song, Spinning Song and Venetian Boat Songs.  The final movement, with it’s own introduction, sparkles from beginning to end.  Mendelssohn had utilized his personal brilliante style in many compositions, but never with greater passion than in this concluding movement.
    The oratorio Elijah would be the next great success in Mendelssohn’s career.  At Buckingham Palace, Prince Albert inscribed a libretto thus:  “To the noble artist who, surrounded by the Baal-worship of false art, through genius and study has been able, like a second Elijah, to remain true to the service of true art . . .”  Ever since Richard Wagner published the anti-Semitic tract “On Judaism in Music,” that attacks both Mendelssohn and the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, the discourse on Mendelssohn has been poisoned.  More live performance of Mendelssohn’s music will surely bolster Prince Albert’s view and eradicate Wagner’s.