From left to right: Joseph Joachim, Robert and Clara Schumann

By rights, a violin concerto by a composer of the calibre of Robert Schumann (whose ease with melody would make this sort of work a gift to the violinist) should rank among the best of the genre. Written for the great Joseph Joachim in 1853, it would be conspicuously absent from the latter's assessment of the great German violin concertos, and remains unappreciated to this day. What happened?

Joachim lies very much at the heart of this story, having become a close friend of the Schumann family after Robert invited him to perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto at the 1853 Lower Rhine Music Festival. The final player in this tale is Brahms, introduced to the Schumanns by Joachim that same year. A close bond swiftly formed between the four, one which proved to be sadly short-lived, as Robert Schumann’s mental health suffered a sharp decline a matter of months later: he attempted suicide and was admitted (at his own request) to a private sanatorium, where he died in 1856.

The Violin Concerto was composed during those precious months during which this intimate musical circle enjoyed the warmest of friendships, and was actually the second of three works Schumann wrote with Joachim in mind that autumn. The first was a Fantasie in C major (also for violin and orchestra), with two movements of the so-called F-A-E Sonata – a collaboration with Brahms and Schumann’s own pupil Dietrich, for violin and piano – to finish with. None of these, in truth, have ever held a secure position in the violinist’s repertoire, but the Violin Concerto should probably have had the best chance of success, being the sort of substantial work easy to programme as part of a concert.

Joachim is known to have played through the Concerto in October 1853, but its premiere on the 27th of that month was shelved in favour of the violinist playing Beethoven’s Concerto again. The Schumanns were touring the Netherlands in the final two months of the year and, if a letter he wrote to Robert in January 1854 is anything to go by, Joachim would have been keen to take up the Violin Concerto again were it not for tiredness following several conducting engagements. Then came the composer’s attempted suicide, and everything suddenly went quiet.

Come 1898, Joachim would express the view that the Violin Concerto showed signs of ‘a certain exhaustion, which attempts to wring out the last resources of spiritual energy’, but it’s difficult not to see a degree of hindsight here. It seems to have been at his instigation that the work was suppressed following Schumann's death, save for Brahms writing a set of Variations on a Theme by Schumann as his Op 23 – the theme being derived from what had been published as ‘Schumann’s last musical thought’, itself originating from the slow movement of the Violin Concerto.

Joachim had taken possession of the original manuscript, presumably with Clara’s approval, and took further steps to keep its existence a secret from the world at large: he wrote in his will that it should not see the light of day until 1956, the centenary of Schumann’s death. Matters come to a head sooner, however, when the Third Reich stepped in to prevent Yehudi Menuhin or Jelly d’Aranyi (both of them of Jewish heritage) from giving the first performance of the Concerto in 1937. It was instead premiered by Georg Kulenkampff, whose long-term reputation has undoubtedly suffered from his association with Nazi Germany – not helped by his early death in 1948 putting paid to any postwar rehabilitation.

Even so, it would not be until 1988 that anyone thought to question the published version of the Concerto, when the violinist Thomas Zehetmair consulted the original manuscript before recording the piece. Few would maintain that it has truly taken its place in the repertoire (those eight decades of suppression have a lot to answer for), but there’s no doubt it is slowly inching its way into recognition - come and hear it in our Schumann & Schubert concerts (26-28 March) and see what you've been missing!