Erland von Koch composed his Saxophone Concerto in 1958 and dedicated it to Sigurd Raschèr, the German-born virtuoso who had left Europe in the 1930s and spent his career persuading composers to write for the instrument as a classical soloist. Koch, born in Stockholm in 1910 and active until his death in 2009, wrote fifteen concertos and six symphonies alongside a large body of Swedish folk-based music. The concerto is usually published and recorded together with Glazunov's, and the two form the core of the mid-century repertoire for alto saxophone and orchestra.