Are you an intermediate violinist looking for some great pieces to play?
Download the FREE violin sheet music of 107 (!) student concertos
(scroll down to see the full list)
Student violin concertos and concertinos are not only beautiful pieces to play as an intermediate violinist, but they also improve your violin technique: intonation, fast runs and bowing. In that way they prepare you to play famous violin concertos like Bruch, Mendelssohn and Brahms.
Let's start with my top 5 as a violin teacher
These are the 5 violin concertos I recommend most to my violin students. The sequence is more in terms of difficulty level (easy to harder). I'll leave the ordering in terms of beauty to your personal taste :).
#1: Küchler op 15 Concertino in the style of Vivaldi
A good preparation for your first Vivaldi concerto!
With the terraced dynamics, typical for the baroque era, and the fast runs, you get some good practice to quickly move to your first 'real' Vivaldi concert.
You might be wondering what on earth are terraced dynamics? It's playing forte and piano without smooth transitions. Really exaggerate: you always have the idea that you're doing more than your audience actually hears.
In the first movement there is plenty of third position practice, fast runs and string crossings. Your left hand technique as well as your bow technique are up to a challenge :).
After a mini second movement where you can catch some breath, we're moving to the 3/8 rhythm of the third movement. Here you can practice some more fast runs, spiccato and in the last bit some fast string crossings.
Now why are some pieces called concertino and others concerto?
A violin concerto consists of three movements: the first movement, usually a slower second movement and a fast finale. A concertino is a student piece made to prepare you for more advanced concertos. They are shorter, more like one concert piece, and don't have three full movements. Like this Küchler concertino they do have three segments with the musical message of the traditional three movements.
The first step to prepare to play this piece is to listen to the recording a couple of times:
#2: Vivaldi RV310 Concert in G Major
Now here's the first Vivaldi concerto I promised. Very fun to play a 'real' concerto by one of the biggest composers. At the same time it's way easier than for example the four seasons.
You'll quickly notice that if you've studied the Küchler concertino above, it will be really doable to study this Vivaldi concerto.
Besides this one, you could consider studying Vivaldi's concerto in A minor RV 356. You can also start Vivaldi's concerto for two violins if you have someone to play together with.
#3: Rieding op 21 Concertino in Hungarian style
My students LOVE this piece. It's a classical concertino, but it has the gypsy sound that reminds you of Vittorio Monti's Czardas.
It's great to study position shifting (only first and third) and work with rhythmical patterns that are very different from the pieces mentioned above.
Click here to join my free 40 lesson violin beginner course for extensive tutorial videos on this piece.
#4: Seitz Op 15 Student concerto nr 4
Seitz has composed a lot of student concertos and I can recommend them all. They have beautiful melodies and lots of opportunities to develop your violin technique and learn new stuff. Also… good spiccato practice!
Fun thing is that they sound a LOT more difficult than they are, so you can really impress your audience with them. For example in this piece the harmonics, double stops and left hand pizzicato's are fairly easy, but give you virtuoso sound.
Enjoy the beautiful romantic melodies and this piece and a completely different style than the pieces above.
Mind that this concerto is quite a bit more difficult than the pieces above, so make sure you can play them easily before you study this one.
When you can play the fifth position as well, this concerto is a great challenge for you. Just as the Seitz concertos it already gives you a bit of the feel and sound of the romantic violin concertos.
Funny thing is that it's called a concerto although there's just one movement. This makes it not too long and a little more doable for you.
