The Violin Concerto is at one and the same time George Rochberg’s most widely performed and least known work, since it was heavily cut in the “Stern version” played and recorded in the 1970s. Here, restored to the composer’s wishes, the score’s primaeval vision of the fate of man trapped in a neutral, unaware universe is powerfully reasserted in music that stretches from anguish and anger, to lyricism and an ending of unsurpassed tranquillity and transcendence.