Concerto for Cello, Piano, and String Orchestra

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The Concerto for Cello, Piano, and String Orchestra is a composition for solo cello, piano, and a large string orchestra by the American composer Ralph Shapey. The work was composed for the cellist Joel Krosnick and the pianist Gilbert Kalish and was first performed at Tanglewood in 1989. It was first performed by Krosnick, Kalish, and the Berkshire Music Chamber Orchestra under the composer on July 31, 1989. The piece was a finalist for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Music and shared the top Kennedy Center Friedheim Award prize with William Kraft for Veils and Variations for Horn and Orchestra. [1] [2] [3]

Cello musical instrument

The cello ( CHEL-oh; plural cellos or celli) or violoncello ( VY-ə-lən-CHEL-oh; Italian pronunciation: [vjolonˈtʃɛllo]) is a string instrument. It is played by bowing or plucking its four strings, which are usually tuned in perfect fifths an octave lower than the viola: from low to high, C2, G2, D3 and A3. It is the bass member of the violin family, which also includes the violin, viola and the double bass, which doubles the bass line an octave lower than the cello in much of the orchestral repertoire. After the double bass, it is the second-largest and second lowest (in pitch) bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra. The cello is used as a solo instrument, as well as in chamber music ensembles (e.g., string quartet), string orchestras, as a member of the string section of symphony orchestras, most modern Chinese orchestras, and some types of rock bands.

Piano musical instrument

The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings.

A string orchestra is an orchestra consisting solely of a string section made up of the bowed strings used in Western Classical music. The instruments of such an orchestra are most often the following: the violin, which is divided into first and second violin players, the viola, the cello, and usually, but not always, the double bass.

Contents

Composition

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

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession. A movement is a section, "a major structural unit perceived as the result of the coincidence of relatively large numbers of structural phenomena".

A unit of a larger work that may stand by itself as a complete composition. Such divisions are usually self-contained. Most often the sequence of movements is arranged fast-slow-fast or in some other order that provides contrast.

  1. Prologue
  2. Psalm
  3. Rondo

Reception

Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times called it a "visionary work" and wrote, "The score calls, crazily, for an orchestra of 48 strings. The concerto begins with an inexorable Prologue, which is followed by a subdued Psalm, almost Hebraic in its mysterious solemnity, and a fractured and exuberant Rondo." [4] Lesley Valdes of The Philadelphia Inquirer was more critical of the work, however, remarking, "In the Concerto for Cello, Piano and Strings, Shapey has crafted a dense, lurching, argumentative piece whose motives mysteriously soften in its slow movement to form a psalm of some beauty—although its beauty seems self-conscious because atmospherically it emphatically suggests the woodland scene from Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges ." [3]

Anthony "Tony" Tommasini is chief music critic for The New York Times, and has authored three books.

<i>The New York Times</i> Daily broadsheet newspaper based in New York City

The New York Times is an American newspaper based in New York City with worldwide influence and readership. Founded in 1851, the paper has won 125 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper. The Times is ranked 17th in the world by circulation and 2nd in the U.S.

<i>The Philadelphia Inquirer</i> daily newspaper

The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the United States. Owned by Philadelphia Media Network, a subsidiary of The Philadelphia Foundation's nonprofit Institute for Journalism in New Media, The Inquirer has the eighteenth largest average weekday U.S. newspaper circulation and has won twenty Pulitzer Prizes. It is the newspaper of record in the Delaware Valley.

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References

  1. ↑ Fischer, Heinz Dietrich, ed. (2010). The Pulitzer Prize Winners for Music: Composer Biographies, Premiere Programs and Jury Reports. Peter Lang. p. 202. ISBN   3631596081.
  2. ↑ Stearns, David (17 June 2002). "Obituary: Ralph Shapey". The Guardian . Retrieved February 3, 2016.
  3. 1 2 Valdes, Lesley (October 30, 1990). "Two Composers Share Top Friedheim Prize". The Philadelphia Inquirer . Retrieved February 3, 2016.
  4. ↑ Tommasini, Anthony (July 28, 2002). "MUSIC; A Composer As Spiky As His Music". The New York Times . Retrieved February 3, 2016.
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