Dmitri Shostakovich composed the Scherzo in F sharp minor, Op. 1 during his first semesters at the St Petersburg Conservatory (he began his studies there at the age of only 13!). In this inconspicuous, five-minute orchestral miniature, the talented teenager gave a foretaste of his future symphonic genius, delighting listeners with his original melodic inventiveness, excellent mastery of form and remarkable orchestration. More than twenty years later, he used the first theme of the Scherzo in the miniature The Clockwork Doll, which was included in a collection of easy piano pieces entitled Children's Notebook (Op. 69 No. 6).

It is hard to believe today that after Adolf Brodsky gave the first performance of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, on 4 December 1881, in Vienna, the influential critic Eduard Hanslick declared the work to be long and pretentious. Moreover, this three-movement work, composed in 1878 during the composer’s stay at the spa town of Clarens on Lake Geneva, had previously been rejected by the eminent violinist and violin teacher Leopold Auer, who considered it... unplayable. Today, alongside concerts by Mozart, Beethoven, Paganini, Mendelssohn and Brahms, it is part of the standard repertoire of violin virtuosos.

On 8 December 1813, the Viennese premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 was met with enthusiasm by the audience and reviewers. The second movement (Allegretto), which was encored at the time, is today one of the composer’s best known and most applauded symphonic movements. Exuding the dignified solemnity of a funeral march, it contrasts in character with the preceding Vivace and the subsequent movements: the carefree scherzo (Presto) and, in particular, the frenetic finale (Allegro con brio), which introduces lively, truly Dionysian dance motifs. It is no coincidence that Richard Wagner described the Seventh as an ‘apotheosis of dance’.

Grzegorz Zieziula