“We made a live recording of the Nomad Concerto that the great American composer Mason Bates wrote specifically for Gil Shaham,” Guerrero says. “We have a very special relationship, and over the years we have collaborated on many violin masterpieces, including the concertos of Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Alban Berg, and Shostakovich. The fact that we're getting to collaborate on one of the great staples of the violin repertoire, for me, is very exciting to do early in the second season of my tenure with Sarasota Orchestra.”

Guerrero notes that, although Beethoven’s expansive catalog contains multitudes of brilliant writing for violin, “It's unusual that somebody so intimately related to this instrument only wrote one violin concerto. This piece was written for Franz Clement, a violinist he knew very well. Unlike Mozart, Beethoven was a very slow developer of his ideas, and he wrote the Violin Concerto over a long period.” 

Ask any concert violinist today to perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto for the first time, and they’ll want several years to prepare. Clement got only a few days, and legend has it the ink was literally still drying on some pages when he gave the premiere in 1806—a concert which turned out to be downright disastrous. One critic famously dismissed the Violin Concerto as the messy output of a “third- or fourth-rate composer.” The reaction was hardly surprising, given that every musician onstage was reading from Beethoven’s smudgy, last-minute scribbles. A mortified Beethoven essentially disowned the work, and the concerto was quietly shelved for nearly three decades.

A twist of fate brought the manuscript back into the light. In 1844, a preteen violin prodigy named Joseph Joachim was scheduled to make his major London debut with Felix Mendelssohn conducting. Seeking a fresh vehicle for the young soloist, Joachim’s inner circle pursued rumors of a forgotten Beethoven concerto played just once decades earlier.

Mendelssohn and Joachim tracked down the dusty parts, allowing the young virtuoso the time his predecessor was denied to meticulously study and master the monumental work. Joachim’s performance with the London Philharmonic created an absolute sensation, instantly restoring the concerto to its rightful place in the classical canon, where it has remained ever since.

In addition to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, the concert program opens with a work by a living composer with local ties. Composed in 2011, Lera Auerbach’s Icarus offers a gripping musical retelling of the myth of the winged boy who flew too close to the sun. Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony completes the concert. Written as the smoke of World War II began to clear, Prokofiev imagined this opus as “a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit.” His optimism is just as refreshing to today’s listener as it was 80 years ago.

“Imagine Prokofiev living in Soviet Russia during the final months of a world war, reading the newspaper each morning—and then sitting down to compose. You can’t escape or separate your daily feelings,” Guerrero says. “Despite it all, what was coming out of Prokofiev’s own soul at the time was hope. His Fifth Symphony is a piece that represents, I would say, the best of humanity and that what we all hope is a better life for us, for our families, for our children.”

To learn more and purchase tickets to Masterworks: Beethoven & Prokofiev, visit Sarasota Orchestra’s website or call the Box Office at 941-953-3434. All programs and featured artists are subject to change.