A ged 25, Benjamin Britten stepped off a steamship in Montreal to begin what was supposed to be a short trip to North America. But while the composer was safely across the Atlantic, the Second World War began, delaying his return by three years. Among the creative successes of this period, which saw Britten’s music become more ambitious and distinctive (perhaps energised by the quicker pace of his temporary homeland), is his slithering, sparkling Violin Concerto. Completed not long after his arrival, it was first performed in 1940 and has just received a new recording under the fingers of 26-year-old Canadian violinist Kerson Leong.
‘I did a double take the first time I heard the piece,’ Leong says. ‘The rawness of the music really hit me. It goes further than the technical, violinistic elements of playing and gets to somewhere much deeper.’ The concerto is structurally adventurous and its character sometimes difficult to pin down. In its final movement comes Britten’s first use of a passacaglia, a form he would return to throughout his life. While the passacaglia’s repetitive foundations may reflect Britten’s longing for order amid chaos in Europe and uncertainty in his own life, they are overlaid with music of striking emotional power. ‘The last two pages are some of the most amazing in the whole repertoire,’ says Leong. ‘The violin line transforms from a weak, desperate murmur into a moaning and then finally into a shriek – passing through all the different qualities of the human voice.’