Sibelius Violin Concerto

As I promised last week, today we're going to take a look at the Sibelius Violin Concerto. My brother played this concerto a few years ago and I just fell in love with it. During one of his lessons while he was learning it his teacher was telling him to play the opening mysteriously. Then she played it for him, and I've just loved it ever since. Someday I hope to learn it.

 The first movement starts with this beautiful (mysterious ;)) melody. It's beautiful, enchanting, amazing, passionate, and epic all in one!!! It's sooo hard (Suicide in the form of sheet music, to be precise, as a friend of mine said), but it's totally worth all the hours of practice that it takes to be able to learn it. The ending is actually very intense and brings the listener to the edge of their seats. :)

The second movement is beautiful. I heard Benjamin Beilman play it a few years ago and I cried, a lot. It creates a bottled up passion in me that brings tears to my eyes. Joshua Bell plays it amazingly well, as well. (but who's surprised, it's Joshua Bell...)

The third movement is... hard??? Ha ha. It's really hard to get a good fingering for it. When we met Ben Beilman at IVCI and my brother told Mr. Beilman that he was learning the Sibelius Mr. Beilman asked him if he had a good fingering. :) That made me smile. Of course my brother's wasn't any better than Mr. Beilman's but, still, that just shows how insane the last movement is!!

I will leave you with Mr. Beilman's YouTube recording of the last movement, but I highly recommend you listen to the rest of Mr. Beilman's recording on YouTube.