A clarinet introduces the music: only after an orchestral introduction promising symphonic music does the violin enter the scene .... which then emerges surprisingly quietly from the background, demanding attention. Then, however, the violin begins a solo recital, so to speak, as if it were an opera singer, to tell us dramatic stories....  Opera-like though it is, a recitative, the violin leads us slowly and expectantly towards a horn chorale, consciously placing phrase after phrase. String and brass sounds blend beautifully and lead us into the next movement, into the atmosphere of a dreamlike Adagio religioso.

Religioso here clearly means feeling and longing. After a chorale-like introduction in bassoon and horns, the violin enters with a rising gesture and a trill and leads us with its simple hopeful melody into a kind of dreamlike heavenly love song, even harps sound. Only briefly does the orchestra interrupt, as a call "back to earthly reality", so to speak, and question this yearning playing. But the violin continues to dream. Pure romanticism.

Now, completely unexpectedly, a wild scherzo comes rushing in, only briefly, but a virtuoso piece of the craziest kind (unforgettably performed by Jascha Heifetz in 1935 in his recording of the concerto!).... A wild antithesis, so to speak, to the dreamy loneliness of the movement that has just faded away. A short scherzo, then a middle section with a swaying folk dance over horn quints, briefly resting, until it continues wildly again.