Cello Repertoire Archives

From Improvising in Caves to Spoken in Waves

Spoken in Waves is a new piece for cello and string quartet by Chris Beroes-Haigis, commissioned by cellist Cicely Parnas. The video performance was premiered in December of 2023. In this blog post, Cicely and Chris tell us a bit about the backstory of the piece, the journey to recording the piece, what it's like to perform the piece and more. The video performance can be found below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML40XGq2qI4 In 2019, I was on tour with my cello rock band and found myself in El Paso, TX, the city where my good friend Chris Beroes-Haigis lived. We had met two years earlier as fellows at the Sitka International Cello Seminar in Alaska, and I remember I was struck both by Chris’s beautiful music-making on the cello, and that [...]

By Cicely Parnas|2024-02-05T14:49:26-05:00January 22nd, 2024|Categories: Artistic Vision, Beyond the Traditional, Chamber Music, Interpersonal Relationships, Performance, Repertoire, Self Discovery|Tags: Cicely Parnas, Spoken in Waves, repertoire, Solo Cello, Solo Cello Repertoire, New Cello Repertoire, New Music, Contemporary Music, Cello Repertoire, Chris Beroes-Haigis|

A Brief History and Analysis of Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo

Introduction At the tender age of ten, Ernest Bloch wrote a vow that he would become a composer. He then built a mound of stones in the shape of an altar and burned the paper over the stones in ritual fashion. Before age 15, he made good on his vow, having composed both a string quartet and an Oriental Symphony. However, it was with the composition of his epic Schelomo: Rhapsody for Violoncello and Large Orchestra, that he proved to the world that he had indeed become a composer of world class ability. After a performance in November of 1923, the San Francisco Chronicle review affirmed the accomplishment, reporting: "Schelomo is a magnificent work by one of the greatest living composers. Splendid as it is in brilliant coloration, it is not in the vivid pictures that [...]

By Tracie Price|2023-10-10T21:08:40-04:00September 16th, 2023|Categories: Historical, Internet Cello Society Archive, Artistic Vision, Performance, Repertoire|Tags: Schelomo, Cello Repertoire, Ernest Bloch, Historical Analysis, The Jewish Cycle|

Expanding the Cello Repertoire to Include Women Composers

Several years back I discovered a recording of a beautiful concerto written by the French pianist and composer, Marie Jäell. I immediately fell in love with it’s infectious melodies and knew I wanted to be able to play the piece. I discovered it was unpublished but the manuscripts were housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg. A friend helped me obtain them so that I could prepare a score for cello and piano. The Jäell concerto is the first known cello concerto written by a woman. Marie Jäell wrote the concerto in 1882 and dedicated the concerto to the cellist Jules Desart who performed the premier. One may assume that he helped her understand cello technique as the work is in a very comfortable key for cello [...]

By Wendy Velasco|2024-05-20T13:39:32-04:00January 30th, 2023|Categories: Historical, Artistic Vision, Performance, Repertoire|Tags: Dvorak, cello concerto, David Popper, Franz Liszt, Cello Repertoire, Saint-Saëns, Marie Jäell, Women Composers, Xavier Phillips|

Opening Paths: Mexican Composer Ricardo Castro and Latin America’s First Cello Concerto (Part 3)

Español Editions Ricardo Castro’s cello concerto has been edited twice. The first edition was authored by Jorge Alejandro Mendoza Rojas as a part of his unpublished Doctoral Thesis at The University of Texas Austin: “The cello concerto by Mexican composer Ricardo Castro (1864-1607): A performance edition for cello and piano” (1994). The dissertation itself provides a through survey of information regarding Castro, including his life, composing style and other aspects that are relevant to anyone willing to understand the concerto from a wider perspective. Mendoza Rojas’ edition includes a fully edited cello part as well as a piano reduction. The second edition was sponsored by the Sphinx Organization and has been recently prepared by Strings of Latin America (2021). It includes a piano reduction, [...]

By Natali Herrera-Pacheco, Horacio Contreras, and Germán Marcano|2022-06-28T23:32:04-04:00June 18th, 2022|Categories: Biography, Historical, Artistic Vision, Repertoire|Tags: Pedagogy, Cello Repertoire, Ricardo Castro, Latin America, Sources, Origins of concerto, Technique, cello concerto|

Opening Paths: Mexican Composer Ricardo Castro and Latin America’s First Cello Concerto (Part 2)

Español The Cello Concerto It is a mystery how Castro, who apart from being a composer was also a pianist of extraordinary ability, embarked on the composition of a cello concerto, the first written in Latin America. Although there had been associations between cellists and composers in important 19th century works for the instrument (e.g. Beethoven-Duport, Brahms-Hausmann, Chopin-Franchomme, Tchaikovsky-Fitzenhagen amongst others), Castro had no known personal association with any particular cellist who might have ignited his creative inspiration. Nevertheless, it is known that Castro was familiar with the work of the famous Russian virtuoso Karl Davydov (1838-1889), as he made and conducted an arrangement for cello and orchestra of a Lied composed by the Russian cellist. There are also documents in which Castro expresses [...]

By Natali Herrera-Pacheco, Horacio Contreras, and Germán Marcano|2022-06-18T15:46:39-04:00June 12th, 2022|Categories: Historical, Biography, Artistic Vision, Repertoire|Tags: Ricardo Castro, Latin America, José Joaquim Emérico Lobo de Mesquita, Mexican Revolution, Marix Loevensohn, Pablo Casals, Karl Davydov, cello concerto, Cello Repertoire|

Opening Paths: Mexican Composer Ricardo Castro and Latin America’s First Cello Concerto (Part 1)

Español All cellists know that our instrument’s sound is beautiful, but it also claims its own time from the moment our bow reaches the string until we get that characteristic warm, generous ring from our strings. It also took time, probably more than a hundred years, from the composition of the very first known Latin American piece that uses the cello -"Quatro Tractos para Sabbado da Semana Santa” by Brazilian composer José Joaquim Emérico Lobo de Mesquita, composed in 1783- to the composition of Ricardo Castro’s concerto -somewhere between the last two decades of the nineteenth century and its premiere in April of 1903. Through this series of posts, we are hoping to build a narrative that gives some context to Castro’s cello concerto, [...]

By Natali Herrera-Pacheco, Horacio Contreras, and Germán Marcano|2024-06-09T19:24:14-04:00June 4th, 2022|Categories: Biography, Historical, Artistic Vision, Repertoire|Tags: Latin America, José Joaquim Emérico Lobo de Mesquita, Mexican Revolution, Oaxacan Porfirio Díaz, cello concerto, Cello Repertoire, Ricardo Castro|

Cello Concerto Overview: The Should Haves (Part I)

Reprinted with permission from Interlude. Concert Favorites: Cello Concertos That You Should Learn Wilhelm Fitzenhagen My teacher János Starker used to say that cellist soloists have to be ready to play a greater number of concertos than our more brilliant sister, the violinist, who can play an entire season with four or perhaps five concerti under their fingers—think Brahms, Mendelsohn, Barber, and Sibelius; or Bruch, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Bartók. Likewise, audience members are thrilled to hear a pianist perform the masterworks of Rachmaninoff, Mendelssohn, Mozart, and either of the Prokofiev’s; or, Grieg, Schumann, Shostakovich, Bartók and either of the Ravels. Cellists, though, have the disadvantage of fewer pieces written for their instrument and not all of them are considered the quality of the concertos named above. Some are neglected or obscure [...]

By Janet Horvath|2022-10-03T11:23:47-04:00April 10th, 2022|Categories: Artistic Vision, Performance, Repertoire|Tags: Kian Soltani, Elgar, Jian Wang, Dvorak, Walton, Jacqueline du Pré, Walton Concerto, Dvorak Concerto, Elgar Concerto, Mischa Maisky, Standard Repertoire, Cello Repertoire, Gregor Piatigorsky, Janet Horvath, Cello Concertos|

Cello Classics: An Interview with Sebastian Comberti (June, 2002)

Interview by Selma Gokcen SG: What led to the creation of the label Cello Classics? SC: A number of different things all coming together at the same time. At the bottom of it all is my interest in finding repertoire that hasn't been played before, which I imagine is common to nearly every cellist. In particular, for many years now, I have been trying to work out where the origins of the 19th century sonata actually lie. We are led to believe that the cello and piano sonata began with Beethoven, as if he suddenly decided to compose the Opus 5. There must have been other previous examples. In the course of my research, I frequently talked to Keith Harvey and discovered that he had similar interests. His own music [...]

By Selma Gokcen|2021-11-08T13:25:37-05:00October 29th, 2021|Categories: Internet Cello Society Archive, Artistic Vision, Performance, Repertoire|Tags: recording, Feuermann, Record Label, Cello Repertoire, Underplayed Repertoire, Ysaye|