Alan Loveday (violin)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
(Leader, Andrew Cooper)
Conducted by Basil Cameron
Tchaikovsky Polonaise (Eugene Onegin)
7.38 app. Violin Concerto in D
8.13 app. Symphony No. 4, in F minor
From the Royal Albert Hall, London
Tickets may be obtained from the Royal Albert Hall or usual agents

Just as Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto in B flat minor met with an unfavourable reception from the man to whom it was originally dedicated, Nicholas Rubinstein , so the Violin Concerto suffered a similar fate at the hands of Leopold Auer , the Hungarian violinist for whom Tchaikovsky had written it. Auer declared that its difficulties were so great as to be almost insuperable. Three years passed before any violinist would attempt it; it was then performed in Vienna, the soloist being Adolf Brodsky, who later settled in England and became Principal of the Royal Manchester College of Music. The Concerto owes its present popularity, not only to the wonderful opportunities it offers the soloist, but to the many haunting melodies it contains. The general mood of the Concerto, genial and serene, is strikingly different from the uneasiness of mind apparent in the Fourth Symphony, written in the previous year. (H.R.)