Heino Eller - Violin concerto (1937)

Heino Eller

(7 March 1887 – 16 June 1970) was an Estonian composer and composition teacher.

 

Violin concerto in B minor(1937) Heino Eller composed his violin concerto in 1937. It is his only concerto and the first violin concerto in Estonian classical music. Along with his first symphony (1936) and the symphonic suite "White Night" (1939) it represents the largest orchestral works in the composers output in 1930s and exemplifies his middle-period, where Eller developed a idiosyncratic musical style in which modal, static and quartal harmonies along with folk music influences steadily made their way to the composers late-romantic musical language and his early modernist tendencies relaxed. Still his music from before the Soviet occupation was deemed formalist and frowned upon by the later regime, causing him to simplify his later style greatly. As a result many of his major pieces from this period are still relatively unknown and only recently enjoy more attention. The composition was not premiered until 1965 until the "thaw" period and a relaxation of the regime. For that performance, at the request of violinist Vladimir Arumäe, Eller revised the concerto, leaving out several sections. In that version the composition is usually performed and recorded after that. This performance claims to be the first true to the original version(though a few bars curiously are still left out).