Given the lush, lyrical, Romantic propensities of Samuel Barber's music, it should come as no surprise that the composer achieved great success in that most Romantic of genres, the solo instrumental concerto. Indeed, Barber wrote a concerto for each of the "Big Three" concerto instruments: piano, violin, and cello, producing a trio of works that have earned a secure place in the standard repertoire. With an extensive timbral palette and the opportunity for virtuosic display at his disposal, Barber made full use of the concerto's possibilities, from exquisitely colored, tender lyricism to splashy, breathless pyrotechnics.

Excepting a now-lost piano concerto the composer wrote at the age of 20, the Violin Concerto was Barber's first essay in the genre. Unfortunately for the composer, the Violin Concerto's creation was affected by meddling and interference on the part of the commissioning parties. Soap tycoon Samuel Fels offered a substantial fee to Barber to write a work for the young Russian-born violinist Iso Briselli. After seeing the first two movements, Briselli insisted that the finale be a flashy showpiece that would allow him to display his technical prowess. Barber complied, producing a brief moto perpetuo of under four minutes' duration—less than half as long as either of the other movements. However, Briselli objected to the final movement. According to early accounts, Briselli found the finale, in which the violinist is required to produce near-constant torrents of notes, impossible to play. The violinist later claimed that he objected purely on artistic grounds, and that the movement simply did not fit with the other two. Whatever the reason, Briselli refused to play the piece, and Fels asked Barber to return the advance that he had been paid. Nevertheless, the work was successfully premiered on February 7, 1941, by Albert Spalding and the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy.

Although the Concerto's Allegro is marked by a predominantly lyrical, even vernal, quality, the movement is hardly free of the conflict and high drama typifying the concerto tradition. The flowing, organic material that opens the movement is contrasted by a short, distinctive iambic rhythmic figure which recurs in various guises throughout. The characteristically lyrical Andante, which, like so many of Barber's slow movements, possesses a melancholic, elegiac quality, is tinged with a certain mercurial moodiness. The final perpetual-motion Presto is a breathless, nonstop whirlwind that races by in a steady, virtually uninterrupted rhythmic flow illuminated by brilliant flashes of color.

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