Julia Fischer’s award winning now on double LP - bittersweet memories of a turbulent life The entirety of Tchaikovsky’s repertoire for solo violin, including his only concerto for the instrument, was written during a period of remarkable turbulence between 1875 and 1878. His recent marriage to Antonia Milyukova had plunged the composer into nearly-suicidal depression, and for a brief time his preferred method of expression became an instrument he had generally shunned early in his career.

The most notable product of this anguish was Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D, a work that swings widely between extremes as wide as Russian gypsy music and Western European-influenced Romanticism, and was deemed unplayable at the time of its premiere.