Violin Concerto op. 36

Schoenberg wrote the Violin Concerto in Los Angeles between 1934 and 1936, his first years in American exile, and dedicated it to Anton Webern. Jascha Heifetz was offered it and declined; the composer is said to have remarked that the concerto would require a violinist with six fingers. Louis Krasner, who had already commissioned Berg's concerto, took it on and played the premiere with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski on 6 December 1940. The three movements keep the outward shape of a Romantic concerto while running on a twelve-tone row.