The genesis of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto was not a happy one. In 1939, an industrialist in Philadelphia paid Barber $1,000 to compose the work for a violin-prodigy protégé. Presented with the first two movements, the protégé deemed them insufficiently virtuosic. When Barber added a third movement that was much more so, other experts declared Barber’s entire score “unviolinistic.” Then came the premiere, with a different soloist, and presto! The Barber Violin Concerto took its place in the canon as a neo-Romantic masterpiece, and in the hands of Benjamin Beilman, it never fails to come off that way. Ten years ago, when he played it with the New York Youth Symphony at Carnegie Hall, The New York Times posted quite the valentine (“dark chocolate sound and lyricism,” “rhapsodic playing”). In 2024, when he played it again, this time to open the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s new season, subbing for Hilary Hahn, the Chicago Tribune followed suit (“such finesse, such je ne sais quoi”). And this season, the Barber serves as the vehicle for Beilman’s debut with the Seattle Symphony. Curiously enough, he’ll be subbing again—this time for three of the Kanneh-Mason siblings, who had to withdraw from their performance of Beethoven’s majestic Triple Concerto because cellist Sheku, the family’s standard bearer, sustained an injury. Seven in number, ranging in age from their mid-teens to their late 20s, the Kanneh-Masons are media darlings. Beilman, who could moonlight in Ralph Lauren layouts at the drop of a hat, is traveling a very different path. In his mid-30s, he juggles a faculty position at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, his alma mater, with a busy international concert career. Gaps in his datebook are few, but the planets aligned. —Matthew Gurewitsch