I was thinking about what to do today when out of the blue a piece of music I haven’t heard in ages popped up on the random play function on my system.

It also reminded me of an ex colleague (my friend with the really long name) as it was by a Belgian composer who should get far more credit than he does. So Leslie, this is for you…….and for me because I love investigating and writing these essays.

Henri François Joseph Vieuxtemps (17 February 1820 – 6 June 1881) was a Belgian composer and violinist. He occupies an important place in the history of the violin as he was a prominent exponent of the Franco-Belgian violin school during the mid-19th century. He is also known for playing upon what is now known as the Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesù, a violin of superior workmanship.

Vieuxtemps was born in Verviers, Belgium which at the time was part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. His father was a weaver and amateur violinist and violin-maker. He received his first violin instruction from his father and a local teacher and gave his first public performance at the age of six, playing a concerto by Pierre Rode. Soon he was giving concerts in various surrounding cities, including Liège and Brussels where he met the violinist Charles Auguste de Bériot, with whom he began studies.

In 1829, Bériot took him to Paris where he made a successful concert debut, again with a concerto by Rode, but he had to return the next year because of the July Revolution and Bériot’s marriage to his mistress Maria Malibran and departure on a concert tour. Back in Brussels, Vieuxtemps continued developing his violin technique on his own, his musicianship deepened by playing with the deeply musical mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot, Malibran’s sister. A tour of Germany in 1833 brought friendship with Louis Spohr and with Robert Schumann, who compared the boy to Niccolò Paganini. During the following decade he visited various European cities, impressing with his virtuosity not only audiences but also famous musicians such as Hector Berlioz and Paganini himself, whom he encountered at his London debut in 1834.

He had aspirations of becoming a composer as well and, having already taken lessons with the respected Simon Sechter in Vienna, spent the winter of 1835–1836 studying composition with Anton Reicha in Paris. His first violin concerto, later published as Concerto No. 2, dates from this time.

His Violin Concerto No. 1 was acclaimed when he played it in Saint Petersburg on his second visit in 1840 and in Paris the next year; Berlioz found it “a magnificent symphony for violin and orchestra”. Based in Paris, Vieuxtemps continued to compose with great success and perform throughout Europe. With the pianist Sigismond Thalberg, he performed in the United States. He was particularly admired in Russia where he resided permanently between 1846 and 1851 as a court musician of Tsar Nicholas I and soloist in the Imperial Theatre. During this period he composed his most popular violin concerto, No. 4 in D minor, Op. 31.

He founded the violin school of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and guided the formation of a “Russian school” of violinists. He left Russia in 1851 and resumed his career as a virtuoso performer. His second American tour occurred in 1857-1858 where he again achieved great success with critics and public alike. His Fifth Violin Concerto came in 1861. The composer and his wife and family moved to Paris five years later, owing to the unstable political situation in Frankfurt, where they had been living since 1855. His wife died suddenly in 1868, after which he resumed foreign concert tours for a time. He took a teaching post at the Brussels Conservatory in 1871, where his students included Eugène Ysaÿe. A paralytic stroke disabled his right arm two years later and he moved to Paris again, his violin class being taken over by Henryk Wieniawski. Although he seemed to be gradually recovering from his stroke, another one in 1879 ended his career as a violinist for good. He spent his last years in a sanatorium in Mustapha Supérieur, Algeria, where his daughter and her husband had settled, and continued to compose, though frustrated by his inability to play or, as he was far from the musical centres of Europe, even hear his music played by others. He died two years later in this sanatorium.

The bulk of Vieuxtemps’ compositions were for his own instrument, including seven concertos and a variety of short salon pieces, though towards the end of his life, when he had to give up the violin, he often turned to other instruments, writing two cello concertos, a viola sonata and three string quartets among other things. It is because of his seven violin concertos, however, that Vieuxtemps is generally known to audiences and musicians around the world. Through his own concertos and his advocacy of the concertos of Beethoven (he also played Beethoven’s sonatas and string quartets) and Mendelssohn, he added a more classical dimension to the violin repertoire which had tended towards technically brilliant but often shallow variations and fantasies on popular operatic themes. Vieuxtemps never indulged in sheer virtuosity for its own sake, like some of his predecessors. Eugène Ysaÿe quotes him as saying “Not runs for the sake of runs – sing, sing!”

What of that exquisite violin that Vieuxtemps played throughout his life? 

He owned and played what is now known as the Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesù, a violin, built in 1741, that is considered one of the finest examples of the craftsmanship of Giuseppe Guarneri and which is considered to be without defect despite its continued use over many years. The “del Gesù” (literally “of Jesus”) refers to the manufacturer incorporating the nomina sacra, I.H.S. (iota-eta-sigma) and a Roman Cross in the labels he affixed to his work. At Vieuxtemps’ funeral the violin was carried upon a pillow behind the hearse carrying the body. I believe the person who carried the violin was none other than Vieuxtemps’ pupil Eugène Ysaÿe. The instrument was later played by noted violin masters like Yehudi Menuhin, Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. In January 2012 the instrument was purchased, by a private collector, for an undisclosed sum and lifetime use of it bequeathed to violinist Anne Akiko Meyers.

Of his seven violin concertos, the Violin Concerto No. 5 in A minor, Op. 37 is often performed to this day. It was composed between 1858 and 1859 and was published in 1861 . Leopold Auer, famous for his comments about Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, later wrote that the concerto had been “practically forgotten” but if played as its composer intended, “will not fail to impress the majority of its auditors”.

The work consists of three movements played without breaks:

1. Allegro non troppo
2. Adagio
3. Allegro con fuoco

A full performance of the piece usually lasts from 18 to 20 minutes.

See what you think.

Keith.