This cadenza was unusually long, even though the first movement of the concerto takes roughly 25 minutes (the other 1st movements I’ve listened to so far were all around only eight minutes) . Therefore one might think that the instrumentalist, Itzhak Perlman wanted to adjust the cadenza, which was improvised, to the length of the movement.
The cadenza itself only has a calmer part at near the end of it, the rest seems mostly very hectically and fast. He starts with fast upwards going arpeggios, and a scale going down. It is noticeable, that there is one motive he uses throughout most of the cadenza, which he starts on different notes. Towards the end of the cadenza, he uses many thrills in a row, always an octave apart from one another. There is one part ,near the end, of the whole cadenza,which is a bit slower and calmer to the rest and creates a good contrast to the generally hectic motifs.
For this cadenza I found it difficult to follow the motifs and themes, due to its length and speed. As mentioned in the first paragraph, Perlman probably adjusted the length of the cadenza to the length of the first movement. 25 minutes obviously give away more material to work with in a a cadenza, but I myself found it was too long. Due to the nearly always similar staying colour of sound, I had the feeling that it became rather boring after the first minute.
Dianas Learning Log 