Cello Concerto (Albert)

The Cello Concerto is a concerto for cello and orchestra by the American composer Stephen Albert. The work was commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for the cellist Yo-Yo Ma. It was given its world premiere by Yo-Yo Ma and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under the direction of David Zinman in Baltimore, May 1990.^[1] It was one of Albert's last completed compositions before his death in December 1992.^[2] The piece was later awarded the 1995 Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.^[3]

Structure

The concerto has a duration of roughly 22 minutes and is composed in three movements:

1. Audacemente ma sostenuto
2. Con brio – instante (urgent)
3. Larghetto

Reception

Andrew Clements of BBC Music Magazine praised the Cello Concerto as a "real novelty", remarking, "It is a beautifully wrought, coherent work, with some striking moments of dark introspection and a tragic cast that is truly impressive."^[4] Gramophone called the work "a pretty riveting experience" and wrote:

Fairly cosmopolitan in overall style (audible influences include Sibelius and Bernstein), it opens with an intense, rhapsodizing solo, before a blast of brass and a flurry of strings make way for a Mahlerian rising figure on the woodwind and a good deal of agitated argument. Ideas throughout are darkly colourful but conventional, although Albert's score incorporates imaginative use of brass, harp (especially in its lower registers), piano and heavy percussion. There's a scurrying scherzo, a pensive Larghetto (which opens with a Britten-style brass clarion call) and a ten-minute finale that occasionally suggests Bartok or the Stravinsky of the Symphony in Three Movements.^[5]

References