Cello Concerto (Dvořák)

The Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, B. 191, is the last solo concerto by Antonín Dvořák. It was written in 1894–1895 for his friend, the cellist Hanuš Wihan, but was premiered by the English cellist Leo Stern.

Structure

The piece is scored for a full romantic orchestra (with the exception of a 4th horn), containing two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle (last movement only), and strings, and is in the standard three-movement concerto format:

Total duration: approximately 40 minutes.

History

In 1865, early in his career, Dvořák started a Cello Concerto in A major (B. 10). The piece was written for Ludevít Peer, whom he knew well from the Provisional Theatre Orchestra in which they both played. He handed the cello score (with piano accompaniment) over to Peer for review but neither bothered to finish the piece. It was recovered from his estate in 1925.

Double Concerto (Brahms)

The Double Concerto in A minor, Op. 102, by Johannes Brahms is a concerto for violin, cello and orchestra. The orchestra consists of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns (4), trumpets, timpani and strings.

Origin of the work

The Double Concerto was Brahms' final work for orchestra. It was composed in the summer of 1887, and first performed on 18 October of that year in the Gürzenich in Köln, Germany. Brahms approached the project with anxiety over writing for instruments that were not his own. He wrote it for the cellist Robert Hausmann, a frequent chamber music collaborator, and his old but estranged friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. The concerto was, in part, a gesture of reconciliation towards Joachim, after their long friendship had ruptured following Joachim's divorce from his wife Amalie. (Brahms had sided with Amalie in the dispute.)

The concerto makes use of the musical motif A-E-F, a permutation of F-A-E, which stood for a personal motto of Joachim, Frei aber einsam ("free but lonely"). Thirty-four years earlier, Brahms had been involved in a collaborative work using the F-A-E motif in tribute to Joachim: the F-A-E Sonata of 1853.

Cello Concerto (Finzi)

The Cello Concerto in A minor, Op 40, was composed by Gerald Finzi in 1955.

The piece is in three movements:

The concerto was written as the result of a request by John Barbirolli, and first performed by Barbirolli and the Hallé Orchestra, with Christopher Bunting as the soloist at the Cheltenham Music Festival on 19 July 1955.

Part of the second movement was used as the signature tune for the BBC Radio 2003 of adaptation of C. P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers.

See also

External links

Cello Concerto (Schumann)

The Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129, by Robert Schumann was completed in a period of only two weeks, between 10 October and 24 October 1850, shortly after Schumann became the music director at Düsseldorf.

The concerto was never played in Schumann's lifetime. It was premiered on 9 June 1860, four years after his death, at the Leipzig Conservatory in a concert in honour of the 50th anniversary of Schumann's birth, with Ludwig Ebert as soloist.

The length of a typical performance is about 25 minutes.

Movements

The piece is in three movements, which follow on from each other without a pause:

Instrumentation

The work is scored for solo cello, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Analysis

Written late in his short life, the concerto is considered one of Schumann's more enigmatic works due to its structure, the length of the exposition, and the transcendental quality of the opening as well as the intense lyricism of the second movement. On the autographed score, Schumann gave the title Konzertstück (concert piece) rather than Konzert (concerto), which suggested he intended to depart from the traditional conventions of a concerto from the very beginning. (It is notable that Schumann's earlier piano concerto in the same key was also originally written as a concert piece.)