To describe a composition in twelve-tone technique without a score is probably only an approximation of what I consider a violin concerto worth hearing. A printed score is not available. There is also only one CD recording, but in a brilliant interpretation by Ivry Gitlis. His violin playing alone is worth the listening effort. But Leibowitz's composition also contains much expressive music and existential stringency. Moreover, one senses in this violin concerto the conductor's preoccupation with Beethoven's violin concerto, which he recorded in an exemplary manner together with violinist Rudolf Kolisch. Beethoven's music, played correctly, in the tempi Beethoven intended and transparently airy, was for Leibowitz something existential, an outstanding phenomenon, a utopia for the spirit of modernity. In my opinion, something of this Beethovenian ambition also characterizes this unfortunately neglected violin concerto.

Leibowitz made a remarkable career as a conductor, and his recordings of all the Beethoven symphonies are legendary. His works as a composer, consciously following in the footsteps of Schoenberg, have fallen behind this fame. But for Pierre Boulez and his polemical article "Schoenberg is dead," which was directed not least against Leibowitz, Leibowitz was an obsolete twelve-tone musician. For the Darmstadt composers, the objectifiable serial series technique was to replace Schoenberg's expressive music. But is this assessment at the time still correct from today's later perspective?

A first approach to the listening comprehension of this Violin Concerto op. 50 is given by Leibowitz himself:
"The work was composed in the spring and summer of 1959 at the suggestion of the violinist Ivry Gitlis, to whom it is dedicated. The author had nothing else in mind but to compose a real concertante piece, which not only wanted to use the achievements of modern violin and orchestral technique, but also tried to give an authentic solution to certain formal problems of our time. On the whole, the work is in one movement (in this respect, various works of the same type by Arnold Schoenberg served as models). However, a three-part structure can be easily identified: Exposition (mostly allegro in character), slow movement (variations), finale (rondo). A long solo cadenza is found between the last two movements, and a second cadenza accompanied by the timpani leads into the close before the coda of the last movement.
The thematic elements of the exposition are carried out only in the interludes of the finale, and in this way corner movements are thematically linked. In contrast, the slow movement is conceived independently. The slow movement of Beethoven's violin concerto served as a model for this, a work whose real meaning is apparently still often misunderstood today and whose extreme consequences can only be fully developed today. To 'produce' an ornamental variation of the theme in the solo part by means of the twelve-tone technique was a task of particular appeal to the author." (quoted from the booklet accompanying the DIVOX CD with works by René Leibowitz).

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