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from Part II - Musical works
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2011
A week before Sibelius first mentioned the Violin Concerto, his thoughts returned to his youthful dream of becoming a violin virtuoso:
I try to work but have not succeeded in shaping the routine in a way that would please me, that is now my main goal. More at the writing-table – less with the piano. Yet, I once wanted to become a violin virtuoso, and this ‘performing’ element always takes such strange forms within me. Tinkling on the piano and partying. It all comes from the same root. That's quite clear to me now.
Becoming a violin virtuoso had been Sibelius's first priority ever since he started to study the instrument in the autumn of 1881 at the age of fifteen. ‘When I play [the violin], I am filled with a strange feeling; it is as though the insides of the music opened up to me’, he wrote two years later. Along with violin playing he had also started to compose, and year by year his compositional activity increased. During his early years, however, composing was not given first place.
Barely a year before the completion of Kullervo, Sibelius still planned public appearances as a violinist: ‘I play the violin every day. I think I should perform in Helsinki some time in the coming year,’ he wrote to his fiancée Aino from Vienna. He also auditioned for the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, but the result was not what he had hoped for: the jury regarded his playing as ‘not at all bad’, but nevertheless recommended him against playing the violin because of his nerves.
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