Schedule for Artist of the Month Mario Brunello (cello) will be performing Dvorak`s concerto 2022

Composer: Antonin Dvorak

Orchestra: Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra

Antonin Dvorak. Cello Concerto № 2
Mariinsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra

Antonín Dvorak`s Cello Concerto in B Minor is one of the greatest masterpieces in the romantic repertoire. The Concerto was written during the third and final year that the composer spent in New York at the National Conservatory and it was completed on 9 February 1895. It was first performed on 19 March 1896 in London by Leo Stern, though it had initially been intended for Czech cellist Hanuš Wihan to perform it.
Dvořák began writing it after the immense success of the ultra-romantic Second Cello Concerto in B Minor by Victor Herbert, the Irish cellist, composer and conductor and a colleague at the Conservatory. The latter had recently arrived in the USA where he became leader of the cellos in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, a member of the New York String Quartet and the creator of an orchestra of his own that performed light music as well as composing popular operettas. But he was also an acclaimed composer of serious music.
Dvořák’s work on the Concerto did not flow easily. He had left for America for the first time alone, without his family, and that increased his nostalgia. Unlike his earlier American works, (the New World symphony or the Fourteenth Quartet), the Cello Concerto is free of Americanisms. In the middle of the second section one can hear the theme of Dvořák’s song Leave Me Alone (Op. 82 No 1). The story of its composition is connected with the composer’s hearing of the sickness and death of his wife’s sister, with whom he had once been in love. In the finale the theme returns – in the final duet of the cello and the solo violin.
Anna Bulycheva