Mendelssohn’s Violin

‘A violin concerto in E minor keeps running through my head,’ Mendelssohn wrote to a friend, ‘and the opening gives me no peace.’ His feverish creativity led to one of the world’s favourite violin concertos, played for us by one of the world’s most exciting violinists.

Schubert never visited Italy, although you’d never know it from his cheerful homage to Italian music. More cheer in Beethoven’s lithe Second Symphony, with its generous slow movement and breathless finale.