Violin Concerto no. 1 "Distant Light"

Tālā gaisma — Distant Light — was written in 1996–97 to a commission from the Salzburg Festival for Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica, who gave the first performance in Salzburg in the summer of 1997. Vasks scored it for violin and string orchestra alone and cast it in a single continuous movement, with three cadenzas placed as its structural pillars. He has described the material as memories of childhood, with the light of stars that left them long ago as the governing image. Waltz episodes surface and are broken off.