Elizabeth Pitcairn will perform a concerto with "attractive melodies and colorful virtuosity and orchestration" on the 'Red Mendelssohn Stradivarius' violin with the Tahoe Symphony Orchestra.  The orchestra and chorus will perform Mendelssohn's Elijah.

• Vieuxtemps: Violin Concerto #5 - Elizabeth Pitcairn, violin
  
• Mendelssohn: Elijah

About the Concerto

Belgian composer Henri Vieuxtemps (1820-1881) was reknowned throughout his lifetime as one of the greatest virtuouso violinists of all time. He was acclaimed as a boy by Schumann, who compared him to Paganini (whom he met in 1834 at his London debut).

He wrote seven violin concertos, plus two for cello, various other works for violin and orchestra, and a range of chamber music, though it is for those seven violin concertos that he will be best remembered. Although they require great virtousity of the soloist, they are not merely empty displays of technical brilliance - there is greater depth and dimension to the works which put them on a higher musical level than, for example, those of Paganini.

Of the seven concertos, it is the fifth., written 1858-9, with its attractive melodies and colourful virtousity and orchestration, which continues to attract performers. Here we have one of the twentieth century's greatest violinist putting her unique stamp on the work in a live concert with the Tahoe Symphony Orchestra.

The piece is on the short side, with movements virtually continuous, the cadenza linking the first and second movements and the work ending with a very short Allegro con fuoco.

About the oratorio "Elijah"

The first performance, conducted by Mendelssohn himself, took place on the 26^th August 1846 before an audience of two thousand who had packed into Birmingham Town Hall for the eagerly-awaited event. It was an unprecedented success. No less than four choruses and four arias were encored, and the applause evidently bordered on the hysterical. 

Mendelssohn recounted the experience in a letter to his brother. ‘No work of mine went so admirably the first time of execution, or was received with such enthusiasm by both the musicians and the audience,’ he wrote. The Times’ music correspondent was even more effusive. ‘The last note of Elijah was drowned in a long-continued unanimous volley of plaudits, vociferous, and deafening,’ he reported. ‘Mendelssohn…… descended from his position on the conductor’s rostrum; but he was compelled to appear again, amidst renewed cheers and huzzas. Never was there a more complete triumph; never a more thorough and speedy recognition of a great work of art.’ 

It was without doubt the crowning glory of Mendelssohn’s spectacularly successful career, but tragically it was to prove his last major triumph. A lifetime of overwork now brought rapidly failing health, and when his beloved sister Fanny unexpectedly died, he never recovered from the shock. He died on 4th November 1847.