Sentimental Work: Joshua Bell

Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto no.2 in D minor is one of those perfect pieces for violin and orchestra. At only 22 minutes long it’s a very compact work, and manages to embody everything you want in a concerto: a restless, searching first movement followed by one of the finest love songs written for the violin, and ending with a kind of celebratory gypsy dance. As a violinist himself, Wieniawski exploits the full richness of the instrument in every way, from the bottom to the top. When I play the concerto, it feels like a celebration of the violin.

I first came across it aged eleven, at the Meadowmount School of Music summer camp. Someone gave me a tape of Heifetz playing the concerto, and I was immediately smitten. At that time, I was quite a goody-goody – I was practising five hours each day, as instructed – but the one rule I broke was after lights-out, when I’d go beneath the bedcovers with my headphones and listen to the concerto. It was the first time I’d listened to music purely for pleasure, and I still think of it as the piece that took music to another level for me. This was despite the fact that, down the hall there was another kid who spent all his practice time playing the same short passage from the first movement, so much that we were all sick of it after the first week! When he finally came to perform the concerto for the rest of us, we were all in suspense to see if he really could play more than just those few tricky bars – although naturally, in the end he nailed it…