Instrumentation

2.2.Ebcl.1.bcl.2.cbsn - 4231 - timp - perc(3): 2 BD/4 tom-t/bongos/tam-t/susp.cym/siz.cym/tgl/tamb/lujon/log drum/2 c.bells/ratchet/sleigh bells/sandpaper block/guiro/vib/glsp - harp - strings (ideally 14.12.10.10.8)

Availability

Score 0-571-56733-9 (fp) on sale, parts for hire

Programme Notes

My Second Cello Concerto was commissioned shortly after the first performance of my orchestral piece Memorial, which Rostropovich conducted in the LSO’s ‘Festival of Britten’ in February 1993. It was composed between September 1994 and April 1996. It’s a very contrasting piece to my first concerto, in which the cello is often almost submerged under luxurious orchestral textures. I’ve tried to write something much sparer and at the same time more lyrical.

Writing for Rostropovich is a huge challenge - for me the major difficulty was in avoiding the sort of virtuosic writing that can end up as mere fireworks without any substance. Consequently in the third movement, a dynamic scherzo, it’s the orchestra that really goes to town, while the cello plays (though not entirely unvirtuosically!) only in the trio sections.

There are five movements, which play without a break: the whole work lasts a little under half an hour. The movements have the following titles (and character): Declamation – slow, sustained and intense; Song without text – sustained and rhetorical; Scherzo – fast and dark; Song without text – soft and sustained, with a background of string harmonics; Resolution – a résumé of the work, both slow and fast, ending almost as it began.

Colin Matthews

Reviews

‘The ghosts of Mahler and Britten haunt the orchestral colouring: a halo of high violin sound surrounds the opening statement from the cello; the harp sets off the exquisitely beautiful first ‘Song without Text’; menacing muted horns and growling trombones invade the Scherzo. Only in the rumbustious central movement is the full orchestra given its head, freed, by and large, from the restraint of accompanying.’
The Independent (Annette Morreau), 20 September 1996
 
‘The tone is often austere, quietly tense. The cello opens by struggling against immovable string chords and funeral tam-tam beats, and is only pitted against the full orchestra in a brief pounding scherzo.  The Songs are a drawing of breath, moments of respite for the soloist to gather his forces.  Emotional release comes only in the finale when the soloist’s hectoring line goads the strings into producing a lyrical, ecstatic melody.’
The Guardian (Tim Ashley), 19 September 1996
 

‘The concerto opens with a noble ‘declamato’, harking back to Britten’s Cello Symphony, the soloist radiant against a shadowy, static backdrop. Particularly fine are the exchanges with bass harp and cello in the first ‘song’, with its striking high pizzicato chords. A scherzo of monstrous menace erupts in the bass brass, the soloist returning centre stage for a plangent second ‘song’. A finale of scintillating orchestral virtuosity recalls Dutilleux, ecstatic tumult giving way to mystic calm... an often beautiful work.’
Classical Music Magazine (Helen Wallace), 16 January 2017

 

 

 

Concerto for Cello No.2

BBC Radio 3 (United Kingdom)

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Oliver Knussen/Ulrich Heinen

Concerto for Cello No.2

Symphony Hall (Birmingham, United Kingdom)

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Oliver Knussen/Ulrich Heinen

Concerto for Cello No.2

Symphony Hall (Birmingham, United Kingdom)

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Oliver Knussen/Ulrich Heinen

Concerto for Cello No.2

Finnish Radio (Finland)

Anssi Karttunen/Avanti Chamber Orchestra/Diego Masson

Concerto for Cello No.2

Konstfabriken (Porvoo, Finland)

Anssi Karttunen/Avanti Chamber Orchestra/Diego Masson