The initial impulse for writing a concerto for violin was a very
inspiring and enjoyable collaboration with Leila Josefowicz on a number
of contemporary works in Los Angeles and Chicago. She plays new music
with the same kind of dedication and panache others reserve for Brahms,
Beethoven and the rest of the gang.
My long and very happy tenure as music director of the Los Angeles
Philharmonic was coming to an end. After 17 years I had decided it was
time to move on and try to devote more time for composing. It felt like a
seismic shift in my life, and during the composing process of “Violin Concerto” I felt that I was somehow trying to sum up everything I had
learned and experienced up to that point in my life as a musician. This
sense of having reached a watershed was heightened by the fact that I
turned 50, the kind of number that brutally wipes out any hallucinations
of still being young.
There is a strong internal, private narrative in my concerto, and it
is not a coincidence that the last movement is called "Adieu.” For
myself, the strongest symbol of what I was going through is the very
last chord of the piece; a new harmonic idea never heard before in the
concerto. I saw it as a door to the next part of my life of which I
didn't know so much yet, a departure with all the thrills and fears of
the unknown. (Esa-Pekka Salonen)
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