[1] Schoenberg had made a return to tonal writing upon his move to America and, though the Violin Concerto uses twelve-tone technique, its neoclassical form demanded a mimesis of tonal melody, and hence a renunciation of the motivic technique used in his earlier work in favour of a thematic structure.
The concerto was premiered on December 6, 1940, by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski with Louis Krasner as the soloist (Krasner had previously given the premiere of the Violin Concerto by Schoenberg's pupil, Alban Berg).
Krasner later made a recording of the concerto, with Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic.
Teatro La Fenice, 6 September 1948 (XI Festival internazionale di musica contemporanea, Primo concerto sinfonico).
Arrigo Pelliccia [it], violin; Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma della Radio Italiana, Artur Rodziński, conductor.