On today’s date in 1992, a new violin concerto by the American composer Christopher Rouse had its premiere performance in Colorado with the Aspen Music Festival Orchestra led by Leonard Slatkin and violin soloist Cho-Liang Lin, to whom the new work was dedicated.

A sense of past masters of the Violin Concerto was never far from Rouse’s mind when writing this work, as he explained in his own program notes:

“I have long been drawn to the two-movement concerto form as exemplified by Bartok's Violin Concerto, and I resolved to structure my own concerto [similarly] ... The opening movement is an elegiac barcarolle ... The second movement, a toccata, follows without pause and requires enormous virtuosity of the soloist.

“The language of the concerto is, of course, more dissonant than that found in nineteenth century counterparts ... I ... find this to be one of my more ‘objective’ compositions, lacking as it does any stated or unstated program, though I hope that ... will not lead the listener to conclude that my aim was an inexpressive one.”