German-born Rolf Schulte is one of those rare musicians who combines his considerable skill with a devotion to new and unfamiliar music. That commitment was at its best at the Merrill Recital in Paine Hall.

Schulte, along with pianist James Winn, opened with Arnold Schoenberg's Phantasy for Violin with Piano Accompaniment. The pair played with near-perfect coordination. One immediately noticed how Schulte's idiosyncrasies, like his rather unusual handling of the bow, were used to effective ends. His attack was extraordinary, and he released his bow with a preciseness and rapidity that seemed both risky and impossible.

The duo next played Anton Webern's Vier Stcke, op. 7, a work the composer wrote in 1910 under the influence of his teacher, Schoenberg. These pieces reveal how quickly Webern embraced his teacher's concept of a completely atonal music, which had only fully materialized a year earlier with Schoenberg's Three Piano Pieces, op. 11. Webern's pieces, however, already point to a more abstract atonality and are characteristically Webernesque in their brevity and obsession with detail. Schulte and Winn played the faster movements especially well, again showing a real sense of musical unity.

The most anticipated part of the evening was the world premiere of Donald Martino's Romanza, written especially for Schulte for this concert. The work, for solo violin, opened with extreme intervallic explorations that lead to variations that increase in intensity. As the composer wrote in the program notes, "The sets of variations at first are cast within traditional phrase-length boundaries, but as the line unfolds, these become freer and more fanciful." The three parts of the work (alternately slow, fast and slow) flowed well, and there was some obvious excellent writing, such as the one part where the violin seamlessly and idiomatically alternated between bowed and plucked notes). However, it may take several more hearings before I can comprehend the full scope of the work, as I was sometimes lost with the dramatic direction of the work. Still, Martino, a former Professor of Music at Harvard and winner of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize in music, was in attendance and warmly acknowledged the performer.

The first half ended with an excellent performance of Luigi Dallapiccola's Due Studi, an early serial work full of surprises, such as a major triad that appears to come out of nowhere. The second movement of the piece, "Fanfara e Fuga," served as a perfect vehicle for Schulte's dexterous playing.

The second half of the concert came as somewhat of a disappointment. The Three Interludes (1996) of Richard Wilson '63, served as a substitute for a Milton Babbitt piece that was to have been premiered at the concert (apparently Babbitt could not finish the piece in time). The interludes comprise two moderate-tempo movements and a scherzo-like middle movement. The piano accompaniment is harmonically inventive, but the violin line sometimes suffers from a lack of development. Still, Schulte and Winn played the piece with accuracy and enthusiasm.

Ferruccio Busoni's Second Sonata was the only really dull part of an otherwise excellent concert. The work opens and ends with a harmonically adventurous succession of chords, but everything in between, even when played beautifully (as it was), lacks in substance and fails to create a strong impression. I admire Schulte for his programming of obscure works, but perhaps he can concentrate his efforts on more deserving pieces.

As an encore, we were treated to the "Serenata" from Stravinsky's Suite Italienne (an arrangement of several movements from the ballet Pulcinella). Perhaps not quite recovered from the meandering romantic excess of the Busoni, Schulte played the simple sicilienne with too much expressiveness, and was at times out of tune. However, his brilliant musicianship still made this a memorable end to a long and demanding concert.