Accompanied by the Verbier Festival Orchestra, Maxim Vengerov performs Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77. Conductor: Jaap van Zweden.
The work is composed in 1878 and dedicated to Brahms’s friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. It is Brahms’s only violin concerto.
Originally, the work was planned in four movements like the second piano concerto. The middle movements, one of which was intended to be a scherzo — a mark that Brahms intended a symphonic concerto rather than a virtuoso showpiece — were discarded and replaced with what Brahms called a “feeble Adagio.” Some of the discarded material was reworked for the second piano concerto.
The three movements are:
- Allegro non troppo (D major)
- Adagio (F major)
- Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace – Poco più presto (D major)