At least one of the pieces on the bill for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s season finale demands both psychological and historical scrutiny. Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in D Minor was written under extreme duress: faced with Joseph Stalin’s condemnation of his modernist impulses, the composer tacked a bravura ending onto an otherwise tense and turbulent score.

That was enough, it seems, to make the work a huge hit at its Leningrad premiere in 1937, even if Shostakovich later mocked his apparent concession, writing in his memoirs that the final movement’s rejoicing was “created under threat”. But if there are similar complexities in Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, written just two years later and also on the VSO program, they don’t concern soloist Chad Hoopes. His task, as he explains on the line from his new home in Boston, Massachusetts, is simply to master the work’s signature blend of melodic elegance and technical complexity.

“I think I memorized it by playing through it a hundred times, slowly,” Hoopes explains. “I guess that’s kind of what it takes to get through the piece: a lot of practice.”

The young virtuoso doesn’t deny that there are emotional depths to Barber’s work, which reflects his sorrow over having to return to the United States from Europe prior to the Second World War. What concerns him more, however, is negotiating the Violin Concerto’s fast and finicky third movement, which caused some controversy when it was delivered in 1939.

“The last movement is exponentially harder than the other two movements,” Hoopes stresses. “I can’t quite remember who Barber wrote the violin concerto for, but he was at Curtis [the Curtis Institute of Music], in Philadelphia, at the time, and I think he wrote it for a student there, if I’m not mistaken. The student said, ‘Look, the first two movements are beautiful and really wonderful, but for the third movement we need something that’s kind of flashy and difficult—something that’s going to be a showstopper.’

“And he said, ‘Okay, you want something difficult? I’ll give it to you.’ So he wrote the last movement and presented it to the student, who said, ‘This is unplayable. It’s too difficult!’”

A little research tells us that the Violin Concerto’s original dedicatee was named Iso Briselli. Today, he’s a historical footnote, but Barber’s “unplayable” score has become a standard part of the violin repertoire, having been recorded by artists including Hilary Hahn, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, and James Ehnes, the latter with the VSO under music director Bramwell Tovey.

Hoopes, who’s making his third appearance with the VSO, says he’s looking forward to discussing Barber’s intent with the maestro; at 22, he’s still a student. But he’s also becoming a teacher himself, taking his 303-year-old Stradivarius into schools across North America.

“For me to be able to speak with students and share experiences with them is not necessarily about trying to convince them to like classical music, or trying to convince them to start playing an instrument,” he says. “It’s more about showing young people that I have a real passion for something. I’ve found the thing that I really love to do, and I work really hard doing it, and they can do the same thing, music or not. It’s about finding something that you really can connect with and enjoy.

“For me, though, I always thought that my journey through life would be music,” he adds. “I couldn’t live without it.”

Chad Hoopes joins the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at the Orpheum from Saturday to Monday (June 11 to 13).