M. Berkeley: Cello Concerto

• Composer: Michael Berkeley (1948-)
• Format: Full Score – Format guide
• Instrumentation: Cello, Orchestra
• Work: Cello Concerto (1983)
• Binding:
• ISBN: 9780193620452
• Size: 8.9 x 12.0 inches
• Pages: 78

Description

Michael Berkeley’s Cello Concerto was written early in 1983 to a commission from the Milton Keynes February Festival and first performed by Robert Cohen and the London Mozart Players conducted by Nicholas Kraemer. It is a single-movement chamber concerto deliberately scored for the forces of the Boccherini and Haydn concerti. Light-hearted in spirit, it could easily be described as a divertissement.

A scherzando mood prevails, but the cello does initiate a number of more serious, rhapsodic interludes. Unusually, the soloist enters with a cadenza but this does not preclude a second cadenza-like passage towards the end of the music, providing a moment of repose before the rhythmic drive of the scherzando material takes the work to its lively conclusion.

Michael Berkeley extensively revised the work in 1997 for a performance at the Presteigne Festival, Wales, with Alice Neary, cello, and George Vass conducting the Festival Orchestra.