Violin Concerto No. 1 (Unsuk Chin)

The music critic Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle highly praised the concerto, writing, "this is a score of enormous beauty, rhetorical force and structural ingenuity; by rights it should become a staple of the concert landscape." He continued, "The piece lasts about 25 minutes and is laid out in the four-movement plan traditional for symphonies, though not concertos – a substantial opening movement, a slow movement, a brisk scherzo and a lively set of variations on a dancelike tune. The writing is richly colorful without ever sounding turgid, and the solo part combines clarity and eloquence with the sort of dizzying pyrotechnics that any concerto requires."^[4] Christopher Dingle of BBC Music Magazine similarly wrote, "With musings around the instrument's four strings providing the starting point to the first three of the four movements, there is a clear unity around which more unusual textures can circulate." He added, "It is not as startlingly original as the more recent Cello Concerto, but it is an absorbing and enjoyable work."^[5]

A recording of the concerto, performed by Viviane Hagner and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano, was released by Analekta on March 24, 2009.^[5]