The concerto does not call for any true depth of emotional display. The sentiment is amiable and genteel, with a dash of becoming melancholy, and the strength is the conventional strength of a man who in music had little virility. Beautifully made, a polished piece of mechanism, the concerto always, under favorable circumstances, interests and promotes contagious good feeling.
Mendelssohn in his youth composed a violin concerto with accompaniment of stringed instruments, also a concerto for violin and pianoforte (1823) with the same sort of accompaniment. These works were left in manuscript. It was at the time that he was put into jackets and trousers. Probably these works were played at the musical parties at the Mendelssohn house in Berlin on alternate Sunday mornings. Mendelssohn took violin lessons first with Carl Wilhelm Henning and afterwards with Eduard Rietz, for whom he wrote this early violin concerto. When Mendelssohn played any stringed instrument, he preferred the viola.
As early as 1838 Mendelssohn conceived the plan of composing a violin concerto in the manner of the one in E minor, for on July 30 he wrote to Ferdinand David: "I should like to write a violin concerto for you next winter. One in E minor is running in my head, and the beginning does not leave me in peace." On July 24 of the next year he wrote from Hochheim to David, who had pressed him to compose the concerto: "It is nice of you to urge me for a violin concerto! I have the liveliest desire to write one for you, and if I have a few propitious days here, I'll bring you something. But the task is not an easy one. You demand that it should be brilliant, and how is such a one as I to do this? The whole of the first solo is to be for the E string!"
The concerto was composed in 1844 and completed on September 16 of that year at Bad Soden, near Frankfort-on-the-Main. David received the manuscript in November. Many letters passed between the composer and the violinist. David gave advice freely. Mendelssohn took time in revising and polishing. Even after the score was sent to the publishers in December, there were more changes. David is largely responsible for the _cadenza_ as it now stands.
Mendelssohn played parts of the concerto on the pianoforte to his friends; the whole of it to Moscheles at Bad Soden.
