Lera Auerbach began writing her second violin concerto on 12 September, in the immediate aftermath of September 11. Having lived in New York for more than a decade, she experienced the attacks not from a distance, but as a passionate New Yorker whose city had been wounded.

The work became a way of transforming pain into music. Auerbach has described this transformation as an act of elevation: a way to move beyond the destructive forces attached to painful experience by turning them into art.

Shock, sorrow, mourning, hope, anger, despair, reminiscence and questioning are all embodied in the concerto’s material. Its single movement gathers these states into one urgent form.

• September 11 The concerto was begun the day after the attacks and carries their emotional aftermath.
• Transformation Pain is not illustrated but transformed into musical energy.
• Phoenix The work’s central image is one of death, rebirth and artistic survival.

Following Violin Concerto No. 1, Auerbach returned to the genre in 2004 with a work of compressed intensity. Commissioned by Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, the concerto was premiered in Japan on 21 September 2004.

The concerto’s one-movement structure allows emotional states to pass into one another without interruption. Rather than creating a sequence of separate movements, the piece forms a single arc: a concentrated response to trauma, memory and the persistence of hope.

Auerbach’s experience with Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa also allowed her to expand the rhythmic and coloristic spectrum of the work. The scoring is compact, but vividly charged: winds with doublings, two horns, percussion, celesta and strings create a sharply etched orchestral body around the solo violin.