Zwilich's Cello Concerto

Synopsis

On today’s date in 2020, a new cello concerto by American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich was given its premiere in Fort Lauderdale, by cellist Zuill Bailey the South Florida Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sebrina María Alfonso, the same performers who had commissioned the work.

About the work, Zwilich said, “A Cello Concerto is something that had been on my ‘composer’s wish list’ for a long time. One of the things I love about the cello is that it covers virtually the entire range of the human voice — I particularly like its evocation of the mezzo-soprano … I sometimes refer to string instruments as ‘singers on steroids,’ because of the power they give to a composer to explore virtuosity as well as expressivity. My Cello Concerto engages both the lyrical, singing nature of the instrument and its technical possibilities.”

Zwillich dedicated the new concerto to the memory of two legendary cellists, Leonard Rose and Mstislav Rostropovich. Following the premiere, Dennis D. Rooney of the Palm Beach Arts Paper wrote, “The concerto's three linked movements suggested a meditation on melodic gestures from the American vernacular. The blues hovered over the work allusively … Throughout, the mood was thoughtful but not elegiac.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939): Concerto for Cello and Orchestra; Zuill Bailey, cello; Santa Rosa Symphony; Francesco Lecce-Chong, conductor; Delos DE-3596

On This Day

Births

• 1853 - American composer Arthur Foote, in Salem, Massachusetts

• 1887 - Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, in Rio de Janeiro

Deaths

• 1778 - British composer Thomas Arne, 67, in London

• 1947 - Italian composer Alfredo Casella, 63, in Rome

• 1953 - Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, 61, in Moscow (the same day that Joseph Stalin died)

Premieres

• 1735 - Handel: Organ Concertos, in London as intermission features during a revival performance of Handel’s oratorio Esther at the Covent Garden Theater (Gregorian date: March 16)

• 1818 - Rossini: opera Mosè in Egitto (Moses in Egypt) (first version in Italian), in Naples at the Teatro San Carlo

• 1868 - Boito: opera Mefistofele, at the Teatro della Scala in Milan

• 1889 - MacDowell: Piano Concerto No. 2, with the composer as soloist, in New York City

• 1892 - Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Gregorian date: Mar. 17)

• 1904 - Liadov: symphonic poem Baba Yaga (Gregorian date: Mar. 18)

• 1904 - Ravel: String Quartet, in Paris, by the Heymann Quartet

• 1905 - Frederick S. Converse: The Mystic Trumpeter by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Fritz Scheel conducting

• 1933 - Barber: Dover Beach for medium voice and string quartet, at the French Institute in New York City, by mezzo-soprano Rose Bampton and the New York Art Quartet

• 1933 - Malipiero: Violin Concerto No. 1, by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orcherstra with Pierre Monteux conducting and Viola Mitchell the soloist

• 1940 - Copland: John Henry, on a CBS School of the Air radio broadcast, by the Columbia Broadcasting Symphony conducted by Howard Barlow

• 1942 - Cage: The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs (text by James Joyce) for voice and piano, in New York

• 1942 - Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad) by the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, conducted by Samuel Abramovitch Samosud, in Kuibyshev (the temporary Soviet capital where the orchestra and Shostakovich had been evacuated)

• 1944 - Piston: Symphony No. 2, in Washington, D.C., by the National Symphony, Hans Kindler conducting

• 1965 - Piston: Symphony No. 6, by the Boston Symphony

• 1990 - David Ward-Steinman: Intersections II: Borobudur, for percussion and fortified piano, at the Canberra Institute of the Arts in Australia, by percussionist Daryl Pratt and the composer at the piano

• 2003 - Bright Sheng: Tone Poem for Pipa, Sheng, Cello, Piano, and Orchestra (Song and Dance of Tears) with Wu Man (pipa, Wu Tong (sheng), Yo-Yo Ma (cello) and Emanuel Ax (piano), with the New York Philharmonic, David Zinman conducting