Ricardo Castro Archives

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 The first edition was authored by Jorge Alejandro Mendoza Rojas as a part of his unpublished Doctoral Thesis at The University of Texas Austin: “The cello concerto by Mexican composer Ricardo Castro (1864-1607): A performance edition for cello and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|2024-07-05T20:07:50-04:00June 18th, 2022|Categories: Historical, Repertoire|Tags: Technique, cello concerto, Pedagogy, Cello Repertoire, Ricardo Castro, Latin America, Sources, Origins of 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|2024-07-05T20:08:21-04:00June 12th, 2022|Categories: Historical, Repertoire|Tags: Karl Davydov, Pablo Casals, cello concerto, Cello Repertoire, Ricardo Castro, Latin America, José Joaquim Emérico Lobo de Mesquita, Mexican Revolution, Marix Loevensohn|

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, [...]