The Charleston Symphony Orchestra's December Masterworks Series concert Saturday night featured the triumphant return of former concertmaster Alexnder Kerr in a world premiere performance of Frank Proto's music drama for violin and orchestra, "Can This Be Man?"

This tonal but largely dissonant work has an underlying Holocaust Memorial theme. The orchestra was placed on the Gaillard Auditorium stage in a unique arrangement of two groups with three smaller ensembles in each, plus a battery of four percussionists. The soloist moves from the conductor's left to his right, depending on which group he is working with.

Such a profoundly moving subject allowed Proto to expand normal orchestral sounds to include many graphic and violent sections. Kerr's violin part was not nearly as discordant as the rest of the orchestra, bringing some humanity into a welter of barbaric sounds.

Submerged fragments from various European composers appear in flashes. The melodic final movement, "Can This Be Man: Treblinka," sets an anonymous tune in vivid contrast with its title, referencing the death-camp near Warsaw.

Conductor David Stahl pulled all of these sprawling musical images together in a seamless collage. Kerr demonstrated an acute sensitivity to these horrific visions and the almost unbearable theme of the work.

The Charleston Symphony Orchestra concocted a curious program for the return of violinist Alexander Kerr who was once Concertmaster here and since has become Concertmaster of the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Mr. Kerr's prime effort went into "Can This Be Man? - A Music Drama for Violin and Orchestra" by Frank Proto.

"Can This Be Man?" involves the Holocaust and composer Proto's reactions to material detailing that horrific event. The title comes from Primo Levi's memoirs of German concentration camps. Proto's contribution to Holocaust-inspired art is a violin concerto in the standard three movements but with the addition of a shorter final movement serving as a kind of eulogy to the gloom and violence of what has gone before.

Proto clearly sees his violin soloist as a particular man opposed to forces out to crush him. There is a sense of struggle against hopeless odds, most remarkably near the end of the first movement when the musicians of the orchestra suddenly rise and rattle maracas until the uproar overwhelms the desperately fiddling soloist. Elsewhere in the work are echoes of Jewish folk tunes, used dramatically and ironically, a la Shostakovich.

"Can This Be Man?" was impressive and dramatic. It didn't much move me, but it certainly scared me, which seems what Proto had in mind. But I suspect this is not a work to be understood at one hearing. It needs more. Let's hope it gets that.