Arensky: Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 (with Score)

Anton Arensky:
Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 (with Score)
Composed: 1891
Violin Solo: Alexander Trostiansky
Conductor: Yuli Turovsky
Orchestra: I Musici de Montréal & Member of Sherbrooke Symphony Orchestra

00:00 1. Allegro (A minor)
05:51 2. Adagio non troppo - Allegro (C major)
10:23 3. Tempo di valse (F major)
15:33 4. Poco meno mosso (A minor)

Anton Stepanovich Arensky (1861 – 1906) was a Russian composer of Romantic classical music, a pianist and a professor of music.

Arensky was born in a music-loving, affluent family in Novgorod, Russia. He was musically precocious and had composed a number of songs and piano pieces by the age of nine. With his mother and father, he moved to Saint Petersburg in 1879, after which he studied composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

After graduating from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1882, Arensky became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. Among his students there were Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Alexander Gretchaninov.

In 1895, Arensky returned to Saint Petersburg as the director of the Imperial Choir, a post for which he had been recommended by Mily Balakirev. He retired from this position in 1901, living off a comfortable pension and spending his remaining time as a pianist, conductor, and composer.

Arensky died of tuberculosis in a sanatorium in Perkjärvi, in what was then the Russian-administered Grand Duchy of Finland, at the age of 44. While very little is known about his private life, Rimsky-Korsakov alleges that drinking and gambling undermined his health. He was buried in the Tikhvin Cemetery.

His only violin concerto in A minor, Op. 54, was composed in 1891. One might think this concerto is modeled after the one-movement concerto in a minor by Glazunov, except that Glazunov's popular work was written two years later. It's unaccountable that Arensky's melodious work has only a fraction of the other's favor. The orchestra opens the concerto with a passionate and vigorous theme which is quickly taken up by the violin. The main theme is developed in a sonata-type development section, but also becomes a set of theme and variations in the tempo of a salon waltz. A cadenza reasserts the virtuosic feeling the piece had in the theme's initial statement. A calm, lyrical, and charming slow section fulfills the function of a slow movement, and a brilliant and dramatic conclusion (recalling the Tchaikovsky concerto) brings this 20-minute concerto to its end.