Klaus Mäkelä
Vilde Frang Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) became world famous with the ballets The Firebird, Petrushka, and Rite of Spring in the years from 1910 to 1913. His Violin Concerto from 1931 was also used as ballet music, although with a completely different sound, inspired by chamber music and 18th-century musical forms.

Stravinsky wrote the concerto for the violinist Samuel Dushkin. He started with a single chord, which he wrote on a napkin, and showed Dushkin during lunch. The violinist thought it was unplayable, but in practice, it was pretty easy. The chord became the common thread in the four movements.

George Enescu (1881–1955) was born in the north east of today's Romania, then Austria-Hungary. Ten years later, he was the most famous wunderkind in Vienna. The multitalent became one of his time’s most famous violinists and conductors – and Romania’s most famous composer.

Enescu lived in Paris when he wrote his two Romanian rhapsodies in 1901, which are still his most performed works. He starts Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 soft, with a cheerful folk tune from his homeland played on the clarinet. The introduction grows into a whirlwind of Romanian melodies.

“The introduction is the seed of the entire symphony and undoubtedly the central theme. It is Fate, the fateful force that prevents the impulse to happiness (...) an invincible force that can never be defeated,” Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1841-1893) wrote in the winter of 1878.

The words describe his newly written Symphony No. 4 and is quoted from a letter to his close friend and supporter, Nadezhda von Meck. The year before, Tchaikovsky suffered from a severe breakdown, and the symphony he wrote later has been called his Fate Symphony.

If Fate could not be overcome, the composer found a way to endure it through music. This is how he describes his fourth and last movement: “If you find no reason for joy in yourself, then to others. Walk among people. (...) Rejoice over the jubilations of others. Living is still possible.”