It is in five movements, but in a broad sense, it can be seen as a one giant work. The composer seems to have focused on the beauty of expressionism instead of the traditional romanticism. Thus, the lack of any dramatic expression is often substituted with strong sense of emotion. In the beginning, it has a feeling of fairy-tale fantasy. The piece in general shows a passionate development. The work is impressive in the solo violin’s emotionally provocative passages, the harp’s water-flowing figures, and oboe and clarinet’s violent collision. The last parts of the work produce wild energy.

The Violin Concerto No. 1 was premiered in 1922 in Warsaw with Józef Ozimiński, then-concertmaster of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra as the soloist. Two years later, Pawel Kochanski performed it in New York under the direction of Stokowski.

The first movement is a setting of Joseph von Eichendorff's poem 'Nachts'(By Night).  Beginning hesitantly in lower strings and woodwind, it opens out into an elegiac setting for mezzo and chorus. The second movement sets the first verse of Rainer Maria Rilke's 'Ende des Herbstes'(End of Autumn). The passages by powerful chorus and low brass of the orchestra are impressive. The third movement returns to Eichendorff and his 'Bei einer Linde'(By a Lime Tree), a reflection on the passing of spring in parallel to the onset of human experience. The text is taken by a baritone, his imploring manner mirrored by the orchestra, with sighing phrases on strings and plaintive oboe solo at the close. The fourth movement is in a setting of Karl Kraus's 'Flieder' (Lilac), which, in telling of the renewal of natural as well as human life, is notable for its skirling woodwind and incisive strings in music that is more animated in expression. The baritone remains for the fifth movement, a setting of Hermann Hesse's 'Frühlingsnacht'(Spring Night) and the opening by cor anglais along with harmonics in the upper strings is impressive. It is followed by the choral sixth movement, which is based on the second stanza of Rilke's 'Ende des Herbstes'as, In this movement, the imminence of decay (whether natural or human) is depicted in music that has been reduced to stark string phrases by the close. A soprano now takes on the seventh movement, a setting of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 'Sag' ich's euch, geliebte Bäume?'(Do I tell you, beloved trees), which views human aspiration in a metaphysical manner. It is expressed by fervent vocal writing accentuated by interjections from percussion. The mood changes rapidly when the chorus enters, building to the biggest climax so far, with trumpets and bells to the fore. The eighth movement is a setting of Hesse's 'Im Nebel'(In the Mist), and the ninth is a setting of Hesse’s 'Vergänglichkeit' (Transitoriness). They make an allusion to isolation of humans and weariness through living. The tenth movement is the last verse of Rilke's 'Ende des Herbstes', its sombre intimations of mortality given to chorus and building to a climax with a doleful bass trumpet solo as postlude. The baritone enters for the eleventh movement, a setting of Rilke's 'Herbsttag'(Autumn Day). The movement prominently features to woodwind and lower strings. The twelfth movement is the most extended and is based on a setting of Achim von Arnim's 'O grüner Baum des Lebens'(O green tree of life). Following intensive fugal passages in the strings and bass trumpet solo, the Chorus and soloists bring about the work's main climax, before continuing in starkly contrasted passages as the orchestra subsides into spectral percussion and the chorus vanishes upward into nothingness.