Schumann’s Violin Concerto and the violinists who decided its fate

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When Isabelle Faust performed Robert Schumann’s Violin Concerto at the BBC Proms on 7 September alongside Simon Rattle and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, she was playing a work that has all but disappeared from the violin repertoire.

This concerto never achieved the widespread popularity enjoyed by works by Beethoven, Brahms,or Mendelssohn. However, its extraordinary history raises a more general question for violinists: who actually decides which works will enter the canon?

We tend to imagine the classical repertoire as a sort of musical ‘survival of the fittest’. Great composers write great works; subsequent generations recognise their value; some become part of the canon. Schumann’s concerto reveals a far more complex picture: that the repertoire also depends on the people with the power to decide which music will reach the next generation.

We tend to imagine the classical repertoire as a sort of musical ‘survival of the fittest’

Schumann wrote his Violin Concerto in D minor in 1853 for Joseph Joachim, one of the most influential violinists of the 19th century. Joachim was already closely associated with Schumann’s circle, and his authority on matters of the violin repertoire became immense.

Nevertheless, he never performed the concerto in public.

Joachim’s decision not to play the work came at a significant moment in time. Over several months, Schumann’s mental health deteriorated sharply. In February 1854, he attempted suicide, after which he was admitted to a sanatorium in Endenich, where he died in 1856.

Against this backdrop, the concerto came to be perceived as evidence of the composer’s illness, as much as a musical work. Later, Joachim described it as a manifestation of a certain creative exhaustion. This judgement carried weight. With the support of Clara Schumann and, to some extent, the editorial circle around Johannes Brahms, the concerto was excluded from Schumann’s collected works. In the account of the history of this work, prepared by the Schott publishing house, it is explained how scepticism among Schumann’s immediate circle prevented the concerto from being made available to the public. Eventually, the manuscript found its way into the Prussian State Library in Berlin.

However, Clara’s role in the story was more nuanced than it might first appear. During Robert’s catastrophic final illness, she was pregnant with their seventh child and was virtually unable to visit her husband in Endenich. She resumed her concert career partly to support her family, while remaining closely connected to Robert’s music. After his death, she became one of the most important custodians of his legacy, ultimately taking responsibility for the 35-volume collected works, published by Breitkopf & Härtel between 1881 and 1893. Clara devoted much of her subsequent career to preserving and promoting her husband’s music.

However, preserving his legacy also involved subjective judgement. She feared that mental illness had affected some of Robert’s later compositions and therefore she excluded certain late works from the collected edition; in the case of the Five Romances of 1853, she even destroyed the manuscript in 1893 to prevent their publication. Her role therefore presents a paradox: in preserving her husband’s legacy, Clara also helped determine which parts of it future generations would inherit.

Clara Schumann feared that mental illness had affected some of Robert’s later compositions and therefore she excluded certain late works from the collected edition

It is precisely here that this story takes on significance that extends beyond Schumann himself.

Joachim did not merely interpret a complex new work. He acted as a gatekeeper. His immense authority as a performer helped to transform an aesthetic judgement – that this concerto marked a decline in Schumann’s creative powers – into something approaching a historical verdict.

For violinists, this role of gatekeeper holds particular power. A concerto does not enter the repertoire simply because a score exists; someone must learn it and persuade others that it is worth performing. As a violinist, I know just how much the repertoire is passed on through teachers and performers. As students, we quickly realise which concertos are expected of us and which are hardly ever mentioned. A concerto that is repeatedly championed by leading soloists may become part of the standard repertoire, whereas one that is rejected by a violinist of Joachim’s stature may disappear without even giving subsequent performers the chance to form their own opinion.

This process intersects closely with my research on 19th-century musical culture. In my work, I examine the networks through which music was disseminated. Time and again, the surviving repertoire proves not to be a neutral reflection of what composers created. What survives depends on decisions about what was published and performed, and ultimately, what was remembered.

However, the performers who help shape the canon are also capable of changing it.

By the 1930s, violinists played a key role in reviving this work. One of the strangest episodes involves Joachim’s grandniece, the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Arányi, who claimed that séances had led her to an unknown work by Schumann. Whatever one may make of this story, the concerto soon attracted another outstanding champion: Yehudi Menuhin.

Joachim’s grandniece, the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Arányi, claimed that séances had led her to an unknown work by Schumann

Menuhin wanted to perform it, but the work’s premiere, which took place in 1937, became entangled in Nazi cultural policy. Ultimately, the first public performance did not feature Menuhin or d’Arányi – both of whom were of Jewish descent – but took place in Berlin on 26 November 1937, performed by the German violinist Georg Kulenkampff with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karl Böhm.

There is yet another irony to be found here. According to documents from the Schott publishing house concerning the premiere, Kulenkampff did not perform Schumann’s autograph manuscript in its original form. This version had been prepared with the involvement of Paul Hindemith – who was becoming increasingly unacceptable to the Nazi regime and was therefore not mentioned in the programme.

The concerto, which had been suppressed partly because people detected signs of the composer’s deteriorating mental state in the music, returned under conditions shaped by a completely different ideology.

Almost 90 years later, its history continues to haunt concert halls. In reviews of Faust’s recent performance with Rattle and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra at the Proms, this work is still described as one of Schumann’s ‘problematic’ or ‘misunderstood’ pieces.

It is not difficult for a violinist to understand why the concerto caused unease among its first interpreters. This is not a work intended merely to flatter the soloist, as was customary in traditional 19th-century virtuoso concertos. The violin often blends into the orchestral texture rather than constantly rising above it, and the finale may seem stubbornly down-to-earth, where the performer might expect virtuosic brilliance. These qualities present real challenges for interpretation. However, violinists know that complexity or unusual writing does not necessarily make a piece bad. In Schumann’s case, these complexities were closely linked to people’s established perceptions of his mental health. Contemporary performers can regard these unusual traits as musical characteristics rather than symptoms requiring a diagnosis.

The history of Schumann’s Violin Concerto demonstrates the power performers have over the repertoire. One violinist contributed to the exclusion of this concerto from musical life. Other violinists fought for its return. And every time a violinist decides to study, perform or record a work that previous generations have ignored, they help determine what the next generation will inherit.