Philip Glass - Violin Concerto No. 1: Movement I [HD]

Philip Glass's Violin Concerto No. 1 was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra for soloist Paul Zukofsky and premiered in New York City on 5 April 1987. The work was composed with Glass's late father in mind. The piece quickly became one of Glass's most popular works. It is usually around 25–30 minutes in duration when performed.

Following Glass's early operas, the conductor Dennis Russell Davies had been urging the composer to write more orchestral pieces, and the concerto marks Glass's first full-scale venture into non-theatrical orchestral composing.
Glass's original concept was for a five-movement work, and Zukofsky requested a slow, high finale. As the composition process developed, however, Glass decided that five movements were too many and settled for a more conventional three-movement format. According to Glass, this traditional structure was not a concession to formality but simply a result of the work finding "a voice of its own" as the first and second movements developed into longer pieces than he had originally conceived. The work was composed with Glass's father, Ben, in mind, despite the latter's death some sixteen years earlier: "I wrote the piece in 1987 thinking, let me write a piece that my father would have liked [...] A very smart nice man who had no education in music whatsoever, but the kind of person who fills up concert halls. [...] It's popular, it's supposed to be — it's for my Dad."

The first movement is characterized by a series of light, pulsing chords that are to reappear periodically throughout the movement, slightly shifted with each recurrence. The solo violin enters early in the movement playing fairly rapid arpeggios with a faintly dance-like feel that extend to encompass the full range of the instrument. There's a brief repeat of the opening chord motif, then the brass section contributes a pattern of tightly harmonized chords from which the violin draws a high melody. The piece then plunges into an intense churning pattern, with full orchestra urging the violin into complex arpeggiated twists before opening out once more into the pulsing chord motif. The movement progresses by revisiting and varying these elements, at the same time introducing an octave-leap element that prefigures the main characteristic of the second movement. The movement draws to a close with a diminuendo recapitulation of the violin's opening figures.