On today's date in 1883, the premiere of Antonín Dvořák's Violin Concerto was given in Prague by the Czech violinist František Ondrícek with the National Theatre Orchestra. Some program notes still state that Dvořák himself conducted the premiere, but in fact it was a Czech conductor named Moric Anger, an old friend of the Dvořák's and his one-time roommate, who had that honor.

The concerto was commissioned by one of the most distinguished violinists of Dvořák's day, Joseph Joachim, an old friend and collaborator of the German composer Johannes Brahms. It was Brahms who introduced Joachim to Dvořák's music. Brahms had sent Joachim two of Dvořák's chamber works for strings. Joachim expressed enthusiasm for these pieces and urged Dvořák to write a concerto for him.

So far so good.

Dvořák began his concerto in July 1879 and had a finished score by December of that year. But Joachim had what we now would call "some issues" with the score, and, by the time Dvořák was finishing the last revisions, almost four years had elapsed with no talk of a premiere. Dvořák realized Joachim was unlikely to ever premiere the new Concerto, so he offered it to Ondrícek, a young Czech violin virtuoso who eagerly championed it in Prague and abroad.

We should note that Joachim finally did perform Dvořák's Concerto in Berlin in 1894, some 15 years after he had commissioned it.