Update Title: D4EEA49B-218C-4D74-BECA-10828645744C

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The work is in three movements, with a cadenza between the second and third. The concerto opens with material I wrote as far back as 1969, when I was a senior at Haverford College. The composer who taught there, John Davison, was a man of extremely conservative tastes, and at the time I was writing music much more dissonant and atonal than he liked. The only adequate piano in the music building at Haverford was in his office, and sometimes he would let students work there. One day, working there on another composition, I decided that it would be an interesting challenge, and sort of a tribute to him, to write something more tonal than was usual for me. Improvising, I came up with some music that I loved and which was indeed quite tonal. It seemed to me a good beginning for a violin concerto [and] when, in 1992, 1 began to get some other ideas for a violin concerto, I realized that I wanted to use this material again as the first theme. It is stated first in the solo violin, and then, much more impassioned, by the full orchestra. A transition leads to the second entry of the solo violin, playing the second theme, and the movement turns out to be probably the closest thing I have ever written to traditional sonata form.

The second movement is, like the first, predominantly lyrical, with a dramatic middle section. This movement is scored entirely for strings. The solo violin begins its cadenza over a pedal point, a long-held octave, in the lower strings, and the cadenza leads directly into a short, quick finale which, like the second movement, is in ABA form, the last section being a varied and shortened version of the first section. --Steven Gerber

Steven Gerber is another outstanding composer of the new American school who has now turned his back on the atonality of his early compositions and, in the mid-1990s, returned to a lyrical tonal idiom.  The beautiful violin Concerto is a superb example.  In the first movement he uses hauntingly memorable material from his college years and writes unashamedly tonally, and in sonata form.  The elegiac central movement opens exquisitely but has a more extrovert middle section; then an improvisatory but written cadenza leads to a quirkily rhythmic finale in 5/4 time.  It is announced by a solo trumpet, with the violin then continuing over an irregular timpani rhythm.  --Robert Layton

The Violin Concerto was completed in 1993, though it had started life 25 years earlier in Gerber's student days at Haverford College.  Technically unable to expand on his thematic material at that time, he later used it in a song setting, Heaven-Haven:  A Nun Takes the Veil.  Inspired by the playing of Kurt Nikkanen, he returned to the idea of writing a violin concerto, but continually found himself drawn back to that early idea, eventually using it as the opening theme.  The three movements, of which the second is scored for solo violin and strings, are predominantly lyrical.  Unlike any of the works I have so far encountered, there is here a feeling of British music, the gentle flowing atmosphere of the central movement having Elgar and Vaughan Williams in the background.  Though the solo part does make searching technical demands, not least the necessity for pure and perfect intonation, it is not a virtuoso concerto.  The finale is full of vitality, the jagged atmosphere closely aligned to the concertos of Prokofiev.  --David Denton

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"Steven R. Gerber's Violin Concerto, which had its American premiere last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, is a major addition to the contemporary violin repertoire: lyrical, passionate, dramatic, beautifully tailored to the instrument's character and capabilities. It was the highlight of a program that was always fascinating and often exhilarating: the 10th anniversary celebration of the National Chamber Orchestra...Amid so many competing attractions, the Gerber Violin Concerto still stood out as few contemporary works do in programs shared with older music. Gerber... has revived the spirit of romanticism in this work, with a strong sense of tonal melody and of the dramatic effects and surprises still possible in traditional forms...one of the year's most memorable events."  --Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post<BR><BR>
    
"...Gerber has done a fine job of using the best of many schools or periods of composition. It is quite an approachable work and will please the musical intelligentsia."<BR>--Bob Barrett, Knoxville News-Sentinel

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