Violin Concerto (Chávez)

On 10 January 1947 Murray D. Kirkwood, a public-relations writer for IT&T in New York, wrote Chávez a letter requesting a violin concerto for the professional debut of his then-twenty-year-old wife, Viviane Bertolami.

Chávez set to work right away (in fact, he had already begun to sketch a violin concerto in 1945, during a rail journey in the United States), but it was another three-and-a-half years before the score was completed, in July 1950.

The concerto was premiered in Mexico City on 29 February 1952 by the composer conducting the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, with Viviane Bertolami as the soloist.

[4] Shortly after recording the concerto, Szeryng also gave its European premiere, at the Edinburgh Festival on 7 September 1966 in the Usher Hall, with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Loughran.

The long and complex cadenza is structurally critical, representing the overall shift in the concerto's tonality from the opening movement's D minor to the conclusion in F major.