Proper Tempo
Skowronski insists that the proper tempo relationships are specified in the score for all to see.

“Where the trills begin,” he says, “someone has written ‘Tempo I.’ I can only assume that comes from the pen of Mendelssohn. It means you have to go back to the beginning of the concerto, and what you took for a tempo primo at that time. You must try to replicate that in this section.

“If you start the concerto like a bat out of hell, that’s what you do here. If you use a more sensible tempo at the beginning, you return to it here.

“No matter what, the trills will sound terribly slow. So if you write in ‘poco a poco accelerando’ or ‘stringendo’ to indicate, ‘Look out, folks, we’re gonna have a beginning and middle and end to this section,’ it takes a marvelous shape, through many brief modulations.

“Finally you arrive at that high E natural harmonic, which you hope you can hold forever. After that, there are no tempo markings. So if you have accomplished a dramatic accelerando to the finale of the trill section, when the bariolage section starts you go back to Tempo I; by the time you reach the oboe theme you’re back to the tempo where you started the whole thing.”

Skowronski hesitates to recommend any recordings that demonstrate what he’s talking about. And although the concerto was once one of his specialties, he doesn’t play it anymore. “I want to remember how I did it the way I wanted to do it when I did it,” he says.

Don’t look to other violinists for good examples, he insists; take your inspiration from what Mendelssohn wrote in the score.

“It’s a classy concerto, or it should be,” he says. “Unfortunately, I have rarely heard it in the classy vein; it’s always at the virtuoso, let’s-beat-it-to-death, crash-crunch level. It’s a victim of speed and lack of refinement.

“To play this concerto the way Mendelssohn wrote it, you have to battle the majority of violinists who just want to make fast notes, play in tune, and convince people that this is all music should be.”