Practically speaking, there is really just one Mendelssohn violin concerto: the great Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, of 1844, long a war horse of the repertory. But there is also a very early piece in D minor for violin and string orchestra, composed in 1822 when Mendelssohn was only 13. This obscure item was unearthed and prepared for publication by Yehudi Menuhin in the early 1950s (along with its publication in 1952 came the publication of another Menuhin-discovered work: the 1838 Violin Sonata in F major), and judging at a distance now of better than half a century, three things can safely be said of the piece and its discovery: 1. the find was a triumph of mid-twentieth-century musicology; 2. the piece is surprisingly good (or perhaps it is not surprising, knowing as we do what the brilliant and precocious young Mendelssohn was capable of); and 3. the piece has not yet and likely never will make even the slightest dent in the standard repertory. Audiences listen to it, and violinists play it, with a smile on their face (at best a warm, accepting smile; at worst, the smile of condescension), but few are willing to take the work seriously. All, it would seem, is not fair in love, war, and the musical repertoire.

The manuscript of the concerto is, by comparison with some manuscripts, not too well-traveled. In 1853, the Mendelssohn family presented it as a gift to the eminent violinist Ferdinand David (who in 1844 played the premiere of the E minor Concerto). It then found its way back to the Mendelssohn family, and then about 100 years later it was presented to Yehudi Menuhin, who, being Yehudi Menuhin, lost no time in bringing it before the public.

The piece is in the usual three movements, all firmly rooted in Classical design. The opening Allegro movement begins with the traditional orchestral exposition such as we do not find in the later Violin Concerto. Its main theme is shaped from a somewhat anxious rising quarter-note arpeggio, to which the solo violinist spends much of the movement adding one type of winding sixteenth-note figuration or another. No cadenza is allowed into the movement, but near the end the orchestra drops out to allow the violinist to build up a dramatic cadence—and of course a dramatized "cadence" is all that a "cadenza" properly is.

The second movement is a warm D major Andante that does have a cadenza (written out in full by Mendelssohn), perhaps a bone for the violinists who felt shafted by not having one in the first movement! The finale (Allegro) follows the Andante without break, and it, too, has a written-out cadenza at its center.

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