Anthony Burgess dedciated his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E Minor to the violinist Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999). Burgess and Menuhin had met while recording a television programme about Bella Bartok titled Divertimento, broadcast on BBC1 on 21 September 1965.

In 1977 Burgess reviewed Menuhin’s autobiography Unfinished Journey positively on publication, and their friendship resulted in Burgess’s composition of the violin concerto, completed in 1979.

It is an ambitious three-movement work that has some stylistic similarities with Burgess’s Symphony in C and Concerto for Pianoforte and Orchestra in E Flat. There are some influences from Brahms’s Symphony No. 4 — and the piece contains a few references to Burgess’s stage musical Blooms of Dublin, an adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, completed in 1971.

Menuhin responded warmly to Burgess’s piece. In a letter, he wrote:

I was amazed to receive so excellent, professional and viable violin concerto from you. It has flow, impetus, thematic construction, a good cadenza and an interesting slow movement in its development and its gradual acceleration of pace. When time permits, which is unfortunately not this year — or possibly even next, I should like to suggest that I should one day perform it.

Sadly, and despite his enthusiasm, Menuhin did not perform the work, which is still awaiting its world premiere.

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