SCO Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto Usher Hall Edinburgh 6th March 2025 Review
SCO Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto at the Usher Hall Edinburgh tonight was a chance to hear a work that, despite its at times difficult creation process and sometimes scathing reviews when first performed, has become, over the years, one of the most popular works composed for violin.
What exactly is this violin concerto though? The answers to this question raise many other questions too. At one level, this work is Tchaikovsky in his classical romantic style and this work could be interpreted as a love letter to his former composition student and often considered to be lover, violinist Iosef Kotek. We know that Kotek worked with Tchaikovsky on some of the concerto’s more demanding violin aspects (Tchaikovsky was not a violinist), but there are elements too here in this work that seem at odds with itself, moments where harsh angular movements and sounds are in sharp contrast to the romantic idyll of other parts of this concerto. Is this in part Tchaikovsky’s own inner turmoil at the time in trying to come to terms with his own sexuality and the failure of a very short marriage of convenience to Antonia Milyukova?
Perhaps we will never know all the answers to this concerto, but one thing that is not in doubt is its technical difficulty. One prominent violinist of the time, Leopold Auer, refused to perform it at its planned premiere claiming that it was in its original version unplayable. Anyone planning to perform this work today needs to have not only the high degree of technical skills required for it, but also the ability to breathe emotion into the many sensitive and delicate moments that have helped make this work so popular with modern audiences. Tonight that violinist was Alena Baeva and it was clear to see how her fast growing reputation on the world stage is a deserved one.
Also on tonight’s programme of music was work from another giant of classical music – Beethoven and his not as often as it should be heard Symphony No 4. This work always seems to fall under the twin shadows of his third and fifth symphonies and perhaps part of the reason for this is that it was a very well paid and much needed commission work. Nonetheless, it is still a work that plays with joy and sorrow, light and shade, melody and harmony that is pure Beethoven. Some people may consider this to be a work that is in some ways looking back in time a little to its musical structure, and this may be a valid comment when considered against his highly innovative third and fifth symphonies, but watching the sheer joy that SCO conductor this evening, Mark Wigglesworth was infusing into this work, Beethoven’s Fourth clearly has much to offer performer and listener alike.
In between the works of these two classical giants was contemporary composer Freya Waley-Cohen and “Pocket Cosmos” (2022). This is one of those works that you really have to experience rather than just have it described as it has a very rhythmic, almost organic, pulse to it which opens the doorway to somewhere just outside of most people’s normal perceptions, almost as if sound is the key to another mystical plane more attuned to the natural world than this one is.
“Pocket Cosmos” is full of surprises, full of the unexpected, and at times challenging what we often consider that an orchestra like the SCO can sound like.
As so often with their programming, the old and the new, the expected and the unexpected, the SCO were full of musical surprises tonight.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
What exactly is this violin concerto though? The answers to this question raise many other questions too. At one level, this work is Tchaikovsky in his classical romantic style and this work could be interpreted as a love letter to his former composition student and often considered to be lover, violinist Iosef Kotek. We know that Kotek worked with Tchaikovsky on some of the concerto’s more demanding violin aspects (Tchaikovsky was not a violinist), but there are elements too here in this work that seem at odds with itself, moments where harsh angular movements and sounds are in sharp contrast to the romantic idyll of other parts of this concerto. Is this in part Tchaikovsky’s own inner turmoil at the time in trying to come to terms with his own sexuality and the failure of a very short marriage of convenience to Antonia Milyukova?
Perhaps we will never know all the answers to this concerto, but one thing that is not in doubt is its technical difficulty. One prominent violinist of the time, Leopold Auer, refused to perform it at its planned premiere claiming that it was in its original version unplayable. Anyone planning to perform this work today needs to have not only the high degree of technical skills required for it, but also the ability to breathe emotion into the many sensitive and delicate moments that have helped make this work so popular with modern audiences. Tonight that violinist was Alena Baeva and it was clear to see how her fast growing reputation on the world stage is a deserved one.
Also on tonight’s programme of music was work from another giant of classical music – Beethoven and his not as often as it should be heard Symphony No 4. This work always seems to fall under the twin shadows of his third and fifth symphonies and perhaps part of the reason for this is that it was a very well paid and much needed commission work. Nonetheless, it is still a work that plays with joy and sorrow, light and shade, melody and harmony that is pure Beethoven. Some people may consider this to be a work that is in some ways looking back in time a little to its musical structure, and this may be a valid comment when considered against his highly innovative third and fifth symphonies, but watching the sheer joy that SCO conductor this evening, Mark Wigglesworth was infusing into this work, Beethoven’s Fourth clearly has much to offer performer and listener alike.
In between the works of these two classical giants was contemporary composer Freya Waley-Cohen and “Pocket Cosmos” (2022). This is one of those works that you really have to experience rather than just have it described as it has a very rhythmic, almost organic, pulse to it which opens the doorway to somewhere just outside of most people’s normal perceptions, almost as if sound is the key to another mystical plane more attuned to the natural world than this one is.
“Pocket Cosmos” is full of surprises, full of the unexpected, and at times challenging what we often consider that an orchestra like the SCO can sound like.
As so often with their programming, the old and the new, the expected and the unexpected, the SCO were full of musical surprises tonight.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Please note that unless requested by performers/pr/venues that this website no longer uses the "star rating" system on reviews.