Violin Concerto no. 5 in A minor, op. 37

Vieuxtemps wrote the Fifth Concerto in 1861 as a competition test piece for the Brussels Conservatoire, at the request of his colleague Hubert Léonard, and compressed the usual three movements into a continuous span of about twenty minutes. Into the Adagio he wove Grétry's air Où peut-on être mieux from Lucile, which gave the concerto its nickname. Berlioz praised it. The work has outlived most of the composer's other concertos partly because of that concision and partly because the finale, unusually for the genre, is brief and refuses a display ending.