# Violin Concerto (Khachaturian)

Aram Khachaturian's Violin Concerto in D minor is a violin concerto in three movements composed in 1940. It was composed for David Oistrakh and was premiered on 16 November 1940 by Oistrakh.

## Composition

In 1940, Khachaturian was enjoying tremendous professional success and personal joy. He worked on the concerto in the tranquility of a wood composer's retreat west of Moscow; he said of the composition that he "worked without effort ... Themes came to me in such abundance that I had a hard time putting them in order." Many sections of the concerto are reminiscent of the folk music of Khachaturian's native Armenia—while he never directly quotes a specific folk melody, "the exotic Oriental flavor of Armenian scales and melodies and the captivating rhythmic diversity of dances" are throughout the work. The work has been charactered by "an exhilarating rhythmic drive and vitality, and a penchant for intoxicating, highly flavored, languorous melody owing much to the inflections of his native Armenian folk music." Having won the Stalin prize in 1941, it has since become one of Khachaturian's famous pieces, in spite of considerable criticism.

## Structure

Violin concerto in D minor (1940)
* First movement: Allegro con fermezza (about 14 minutes)
* Second movement: Andante sostenuto (about 12 minutes)
* Third movement: Allegro vivace (about 9 minutes)
A movement in sonata form, the Allegro con fermezza opens with a melody that has been described as "energetic" a "rollicking dance-like theme," and this yields to a "more lyrical" secondary melody.
The Andante sostenuto has been described as "a rhapsodic slow movement that sweeps one into a brooding wintry landscape." Geoffrey Norris wrote, "The ease and spontaneity, pungency and flexibility of Khachaturian's melodic inventions are most clearly laid out in the Andante sostenuto of the central movement, cast in a free-flowing, quasi-improvisatory manner redolent of the art of Armenian folk music." The second movement is a free-flowing rondo.
The concluding Allegro vivace has been called "a whirlwind of motion and virtuosity." In this movement, "the folks element is specially pronounced in the dance-like vigor of the main melody and in the repetitive, insistent, wild virtuosity of the solo instrument."

## Transcriptions

When flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal approached Khachaturian to ask him to compose a concerto for flute and orchestra, Khachaturian suggested that the Violin Concerto would be adaptable for flute. With the composer's encouragement, Rampal completed the transcription in 1968, providing his own cadenza as a substitute for the original violin cadenza in the first movement. The orchestral accompaniment throughout the Concerto remains unchanged.

## Discography

| Year | Soloist | Conductor | Orchestra |
| 1946 | David Oistrakh | Alexander Gauk | USSR State Symphony Orchestra |
| 1947 | Gerhard Taschner | Artur Rother | Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra |
| 1951 | Leonid Kogan | Aram Khachaturian | USSR State Radio Symphony Orchestra |
| 1954 | David Oistrakh | Aram Khachaturian | Philharmonia Orchestra |
| 1955 | Ruth Posselt | Richard Burgin | Boston Symphony Orchestra |
| 1956 | Igor Oistrakh | Eugene Aynsley Goossens | Philharmonia Orchestra |
| 1956 | Ruggiero Ricci | Anatole Fistoulari | London Philharmonic Orchestra (stereo) |
| 1958 | Leonid Kogan | Pierre Monteux | Boston Symphony Orchestra |
| 1959 | Mischa Elman | Vladimir Golschmann | Vienna State Opera Orchestra |
| 1962 | Ida Haendel | Hans Müller-Kray | Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra |
| 1963 | Aldo Ferraresi | Aram Khachaturian | Orchestra Sinfonica RAI Turin |
| 1964 | Henryk Szeryng | Antal Doráti | London Symphony Orchestra |
| 1964 | Jean Ter-Merguerian | Michael Maluntsian | Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra |
| 1967 | David Oistrakh | Aram Khachaturian | Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra |
| 1981 | Boris Gutnikov | Konstantin Ivanov | USSR Large Symphony Orchestra |
| 1984 | Itzhak Perlman | Zubin Mehta | Israel Philharmonic Orchestra |
| 1989 | Valery Klimov | Evgeni Svetlanov | USSR Academy Symphony Orchestra |
| 1990 | Lydia Mordkovitch | Neeme Järvi | Royal Scottish National Orchestra |
| 2001 | Mihaela Martin | Theodore Kuchar | National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine |
| 2003 | Arabella Steinbacher | Sakari Oramo | City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra |
| 2003 | Sergey Khachatryan | Emmanuel Krivine | Sinfonia Varsovia |
| 2004 | Julia Fischer | Yakov Kreizberg | Russian National Orchestra |
| 2007 | Aaron Rosand | Kees Bakels | Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra |
| 2007 | Catherine Manoukian | Eduard Topchjan | Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra |
| 2008 | Nicolas Koeckert | José Serebrier | Royal Philharmonic Orchestra |
| 2010 | Ara Malikian | Jesús Amigo | Extremadura Symphony Orchestra |
| 2011 | Mikhail Simonyan | Kristjan Järvi | London Symphony Orchestra |
| 2014 | James Ehnes | Mark Wigglesworth | Melbourne Symphony Orchestra |
| 2016 | Philippe Quint | Steven Sloane | Bochumer Symphoniker |
| 2018 | Nemanja Radulović | Sascha Goetzel | Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra |
| 2019 | Rachel Barton Pine | Teddy Abrams | Royal Scottish National Orchestra |
| 2020 | Antje Weithaas | Daniel Raiskin | Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie |
| Year | Flute Soloist | Conductor | Orchestra |
| 1970 | Jean-Pierre Rampal | Jean Martinon | Orchestre National de France |
| 1984 | James Galway | Myung-whun Chung | Royal Philharmonic Orchestra |
| 1992 | Patrick Gallois | Ion Marin | Philharmonia Orchestra |
| 2002 | Emmanuel Pahud | David Zinman | Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich |
| 2004 | Wissam Boustany | Volodymyr Sirenko | National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine |
| 2010 | Sharon Bezaly | Enrique Diemecke | São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra |