Tchaikovsky wrote the Valse-Scherzo in early 1877, a few months before the Violin Concerto, and it is his second and slighter work for violin and orchestra — six minutes, C major, no ambitions beyond charm. The printed score carries the inscription à Monsieur Joseph Kotek: Iosif Kotek, his former pupil at the Moscow Conservatory, the violinist who would sit beside him the following summer working through the concerto bar by bar, and the man Tchaikovsky wrote about in letters to his brother in language he used for nobody else.
Kotek also orchestrated part of it, and then apparently took the blame for it. After a poor performance in 1878 he wrote to Tchaikovsky, plainly: “Could my instrumentation be the reason that the waltz did not please?” The first public airing had been that September in Paris, at the Trocadéro, with Stanisław Barcewicz as soloist.
It pleases now. What makes it hard is that the difficulty is all in the wrong place — not in the fireworks but in the waltz itself, which has to stay light while the soloist is doing something faintly ridiculous above it. Perlman is the right violinist for this because he never sounds like he is working. Here he is in 1990:
A dedication is a small thing to leave behind. This one outlasted everyone involved.