Study score

One of Oliver Knussen’s most celebrated works, the Violin Concerto, begins and ends with the same arresting sonority - a clangorous tubular-bell chord and a stratospheric high E on the violin. ‘At times’, observes Knussen, ‘the soloist resembles a tightrope walker progressing along a (decidedly unstable) high wire strung across the span that separates the opening and closing sounds’.

‘A work of extraordinary inner energy that already seems like a classic.’

Financial Times (Andrew Clark) on the Violin Concerto, 11 May 2005