Violin Concerto No. 2 New York Performances

Henryk Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2 is a late‑Romantic showpiece shaped by the composer’s own life as a touring virtuoso, balancing lyric song with athletic passagework. Begun in the mid‑1850s and premiered in 1862 with Wieniawski as soloist, it later appeared in print with a dedication to fellow violinist Pablo de Sarasate. The concerto matters for how it codifies a kind of violin writing built for the modern concert stage: ornamented, direct, and structurally disciplined. At David Geffen Hall, it sits in New York’s ongoing conversation about what virtuosity is for.