Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (arrangement and instrumentation according to sketches and piano reduction: Boris Papandopulo)

Violinist and composer Franjo Krežma occupies a prominent place in the history of Croatian and European culture primarily as a child prodigy, who attracted the attention of the general public with his brilliant skills as a performer in a very early age. Later he became a genuine virtuoso of his instrument, a marvellous violinist whom all contemporaries ranked alongside the greatest violinists of the 19th century. While still thirteen, Krežma obtained a diploma from the Vienna Conservatory, where he had studied violin, counterpoint and composition. The following year, he was giving concerts in the best known concert venues of European capital cities and reaping plaudits from critics and concert-goers alike. His skills as a violinist were praised by some of the famed musicians of the period, like Liszt, Verdi, Vieuxtemps and Ysaÿe. After sensational successes at concerts throughout Europe, in 1879 in Berlin Krežma became the leader of the well-known Bilse Orchestra (forerunner of today’s Berlin Philharmonic), but died tragically in his nineteenth year of life. Krežma’s Concerto for violin and orchestra is a typically romantic, technically and interpretatively brilliant piece with inspired, poetic and melodious themes, virtuoso cadenzas for the soloist, an idyllic mood in the second movement full of subtle tone painting, while the introductory, poetic and yearningly inspired theme reveals the young composer’s exceptional melodic talent. Full of élan, energy and genuine musicality, the third, perhaps the most successful, movement of the concerto is a brilliant promise of new works of lavish virtuosity and true artistic value that the young artist of tragic destiny never managed to fulfil. The Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was composed in 1878; in 1981 Boris Papandopulo arranged it from a piano reduction and some sketches, and also orchestrated it.