Popular Unpopular

Is there a more beautiful violin concerto than this one? The violinist Joseph Joachim, in any case, called Mendelssohn's E minor concerto the "most precious," the "heart jewel" among German violin concertos. Much of it was innovative at the time of its premiere (1845): that the violin (not the orchestra) takes on the major themes, that the solo cadenza comes in the middle of the first movement, that the movements flow into one another without a b...