Violin Concerto

Ligeti wrote the Violin Concerto for Saschko Gawriloff, who gave a three-movement version in Cologne on 3 November 1990 and the final five-movement score in the same city on 8 October 1992. Two of the orchestral string players tune to natural harmonics of open strings, so their intonation is deliberately at odds with the rest of the ensemble; four wind players take up ocarinas in the third movement. The soloist's cadenza was left to Gawriloff to write. The material draws on Eastern European folk patterns, medieval polyphony and untempered tuning.