I love Berg's Violin Concerto. Stravinsky's Movements, for piano and orchestra was a very influential work for me 25 years ago, and somewhat inspired my own Diffractions for Piano & Orchestra (1987). I've since forgotten how thoroughly I explored the note-row manipulation of Movements, I think I was more interested in the textural and rhythmic ideas in any event. Just reading again briefly about that work, it seems that Stravinsky's use of serialism was not that rigid. That's fine by me. Concerning my own work(s) I'd say I "dabbled" in serialism, if it was useful to inspire a theme that would be later freely developed then so be it, which is what I did with Diffractions.
Mention of your own work here prompts me to note
en passant (at the risk of departing slightly from the topic, for which I trust I may be forgiven) that, although much of my earliest musial education (from a Webern pupil) centred on a quite rigid application of principles of serialism, not least the total serialist persuasions that briefly abounded in the demi-monde of Darmstadt and Donaueschingen at the hands of the cliques of Köln, I realised very early on that this was not the way for me in my own work; more recently, however, I have used 12-note themes from time to time in various pieces but never treated them serially.
I love Berg's Violin Concerto, incidentally! I could never make head of tail of Schönberg's, however, until I heard it in the revelatory recording by Hilary Hahn, after listening to which I had the temerity to take the grave risk of declaring to the distinguished Schönberg scholar Malcolm MacDonald that she plays it as though it's a piece of music...
