Tchaikovsky’s (in the photo) Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major, op. 35, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 will be the protagonists of the concert presented by the Fundación Excelentia on 3 December at 7.30 p.m. in the Symphonic Hall of the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid.
The first of the pieces, the Concerto for violin and orchestra, is a work from the Romantic period and one of the most popular violin concertos. It is also considered one of the most difficult for that instrument. It was written in March 1878 in Clarens, a Swiss holiday resort on the shores of Lake Geneva. Tchaikovsky had gone there to recover from depression over his disastrous marriage to Antonina Miliukova, a state that had led to a suicide attempt. The Russian composer had just finished his Symphony No. 4 and his opera Eugene Onegin.
Mahler’s Fifth, for its part, was continually revised. In no other symphony did the Austro-Bohemian composer struggle so much with the work’s instrumentation. As late as 1911, the year of his death, Mahler again revised the instrumentation. However, this version did not appear in print until 1964 as part of the Mahler Complete Edition. The premiere of the symphony took place on 18 October 1904 at the Gürzenich in Cologne, conducted by the composer. Tickets for the concert can be purchased here.
