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- Ernst, Heinrich Wilhelm
Duration: 20 minutes
Description: Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst (1814–1865) composed his Concerto for Violin in F-sharp minor, Op. 23 (Concerto pathétique) probably in 1845–46, during the period when he was at the height of his international career as one of the nineteenth century’s foremost violin virtuosos. A celebrated successor and sometime rival to Paganini, Ernst brought to the concerto not only formidable technical demands but also the expressive intensity and dramatic rhetoric characteristic of early Romantic virtuoso music. Written as a single extended movement, Allegro moderato, the concerto combines broadly lyrical and declamatory themes with passages of exceptional difficulty, yet its virtuosity is consistently integrated into an ambitious dramatic design rather than functioning merely as display. The work is scored for violin with an unusually substantial orchestra of double woodwinds, three horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings. The concerto was dedicated to the distinguished Leipzig violinist Ferdinand David (1810–1873), who also supplied markings for the violin part in the early Breitkopf & Härtel edition, first published in Leipzig in 1851. Ernst himself was closely identified with the work, however, and contemporary commentary emphasized both its musical substance and its extraordinary technical difficulty. Indeed, the nineteenth-century Dictionary of Music and Musicians singled out the F-sharp-minor concerto for the “nobility” of its ideas and skill of its orchestral writing while observing that its daunting demands had already contributed to its infrequent performance. Today, Concerto for Violin in F-sharp minor, Op. 23 remains a rarity rather than a standard concerto on the level of Mendelssohn, Bruch, or Brahms, but recordings and occasional performances have preserved it as one of Ernst’s most substantial compositions and an important document of the Romantic virtuoso tradition, admired for joining Paganinian technical brilliance to a more serious, lyrical, and dramatically conceived concert style. Instrumentation: 2.2.2.2: 3.2.3.0: Timp: Str (9.8.7.6.5 in set): Solo violin (SCORE NOT AVAILABLE). Reprint edition.