He was the first violinist hired by Martin Wegelius for the Helsinki Institute, and in 1910 he participated in the premiere of Sibelius's string quartet Voces intimae, which received favourable reviews.

Burmester was so offended that he refused ever to play the concerto, and Sibelius re-dedicated it to the Hungarian "wunderkind" Ferenc von Vecsey,[7] who was aged 12 at the time.

The Sibelius family has granted occasional permission for a small number of orchestras and soloists to perform the original 1904 version in public.

[9] In January 1991, BIS made a commercial recording of the original 1904 version, with Leonidas Kavakos, the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Vänskä.

One noteworthy feature of the work is the way in which an extended cadenza for the soloist takes on the role of the development section in the sonata form first movement.

[19] The concerto is scored for solo violin, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani and strings.

After an ascending scale from the solo violin in broken octaves, the strings then enter in a symphonic manner, announcing the second half of the exposition material.

The soloist softly soars in a slow D♭ arpeggio which leads into a tender, winding broken-octave passage built upon the heroic theme.

The cadenza occupies the developmental portion of the movement and ends just before the recapitulation, the heroic theme being played by the violin a semitone higher than before.

A long trill from the soloist suddenly transitions into the virtuosic coda, requiring remarkable skill in octaves, rapid and wide shifts to harmonics, and ricochet bowing.

Then, the solo violin restates the first theme and, playing gently grace-noted figures, ends with a light float up to an all-serene harmonic D. Soft B-flat major chords by the orchestra accompany this tranquil close to the movement.

This first section offers a complete and brilliant display of violin gymnastics with up-bow staccato double-stops and a run with rapid string-crossing, then octaves, that leads into the first tutti.

A brief orchestral tutti comes before the violin leads things to the finish with a D major scale up, returning down in flatted supertonic (then repeated).