Mr. Penderecki's woody bagatelle, in its first United States performance, began with mournful arco bass over a buzzing violin drone; roles quickly reversed, Ms. Mutter playing solemn lines atop Mr. Patkolo's sonorous ground.
The Viennese experimented further with orchestration and tone colour, emphasized the violin's melodic role, and displayed popular influence in their playful minuets.
The inspiration for what is effectively a three-movement concerto was, it seems, Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, and the solo violin's primary role in the work is to sing like that mythical musician, threading its long-limbed melodies through often febrile orchestral textures that recall Berg.
In 1999, Madonna had studied for three months to play the violin for the role as a violin teacher in the film Music of the Heart, before eventually leaving the project.
Josefowicz sees the piece as "theatre with sound, unlike any other piece written for the violin," in which her role as a musician transcends that of a typical concerto soloist.
At 16 he wrote his marvelous Octet for Strings and, shortly after, the Quintet in A. As first violinist, Ani Kavafian played elegantly in the Intermezzo, in which the violin has a concertolike role.
Although a number of Gubaidulina's recent works seemed to have been repeating the same rhetorical tricks, the five-section structure of the concerto is more convincing: a progression from darkness to light in which the solo violin gradually assumes the role of the dominant partner through a claustrophobic dialogue with the orchestra.
The first violin plays the leading role throughout, although the movement is characterised by rich textures between the four parts created by compositional devices such as contrary motion.
Robert explains the role of second violin to Pilar, a woman he often meets on his morning run: "It's every bit as important as the role of first violin... it's just different".
It was wonderful to see the brilliant violinist Jennifer Koh, whose repertory ranges from Bach to flinty contemporary pieces, throw herself into the bewigged role of the violin-playing Einstein.
