Violin Concerto, op. 14

In 1939 the Philadelphia businessman Samuel Simeon Fels commissioned a violin concerto from Barber for his ward Iso Briselli, who had graduated from the Curtis Institute in 1934. Barber wrote the first two movements in Switzerland and finished the score after the outbreak of war. What followed is documented in letters published in 2010: the finale, a perpetuum mobile of a few minutes, became the subject of a dispute, and Briselli never played the piece. Albert Spalding gave the premiere in Philadelphia in February 1941 with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy.