Louis Spohr The Violin Concertos

[Toni]

Louis Spohr's best-known violin concerto is undoubtedly Concerto No. 8 (in A minor 'In the form of a song scene'). Spohr's most compositionally accomplished violin concerto is Concerto No. 7 in E minor, at least according to connoisseurs of all Spohr's works. However, Spohr's least known and best violin concerto is Concerto No. 9 in D minor. After all, Spohr included the violin part of this concerto in his own 'Violin School' and wrote a second part to accompany it. Spohr wrote this concerto in D minor in 1820 for his own Europe-wide travelling activities as a solo violinist. From 1822 and his appointment to Kassel, he concentrated more on his conducting activities and musical life in Kassel.

Here you find a listening guide:
https://unbekannte-violinkonzerte.jimdofree.com/e-2/spohr/

[Mark Thomas]

I don't mean to sound negative, but if his "most compositionally accomplished" is No.7, what's the basis for No.9 being Spohr's "best" violin concerto, apart from his inclusion of it in his Violin School?

[Double-A]

Here is a sentence from the listening guide: "And again and again the violins seem to lose themselves in gimmicks of all kinds and high trills."
First of all:  I would avoid the word "gimmick" at all cost in a paragraph designed to entice people to listen to a piece of music.
But on the other hand: This sentence describes Spohr's violin concertos rather better than the author probably intended.  For the most part they begin with an impressive orchestral tutti only to become one dull once the soloist joins in.  The virtuosic passages are too loosely connected to the musical material and resemble each other too much across Spohr's output to be very interesting.  (I will admit here that I am not a fan of violin concertos in general as I hear these same weaknesses in all but the top half dozen VCs--in spite of playing the instrument myself.)
Spohr was a fast working composer who seems to have never gone back and worked over an existing composition (if I remember correctly he admits this himself somewhere in his autobiography).  The result is a fairly high number of uninteresting works, including violin concertos.  If he had been able to muster just a small dose of Brahmsian self-critique he would get more respect than he does. 
To me Spohr is at his best in (some of) his chamber music such as his double quartets, some of the string quartets, violin duos, the violin/harp sonatas and most of his larger mixed ensemble pieces.

[eschiss1]

Personally speaking my favorites of his works at this time include his first two string quintets. The E-flat is in the brillante/concertante style but it's executed joyously and memorably, so this is hardly a fault.