Antonín Dvořák

• Born: September 8, 1841, Nalahozeves, Bohemia
• Died: May 1, 1904, Prague

Concerto in B Minor for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 104

• Composed: 1894-95
• Premiere: March 19, 1896 in London, conducted by the composer with Leo Stern as soloist 
• Instrumentation: solo cello, 2 flutes (incl. piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 3 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, strings
• CSO notable performances: First Performance: March 1911, Leopold Stokowski conducting with Boris Hambourg, cello. Most Recent Performances: (CSO subscription) September 2008, Paavo Järvi conducting with Gautier Capuçon, cello; (CSO special, Taft Theatre) October 2016, Louis Langrée conducting with Yo-Yo Ma, cello. Other: Pablo Casals played this concerto twice with the CSO—November 1915 (Ernst Kunwald conducting) and January 1928 (Fritz Reiner conducting).
• Duration: approx. 40 minutes

During the three years that Dvořák was teaching at the National Conservatory of Music in New York City, he was subject to the same emotions as most other travelers away from home for a long time: invigoration and homesickness. America served to stir his creative energies, and during his stay from 1892 to 1895 he composed some of his greatest scores: the “New World” Symphony, Op. 96 String Quartet (“American”), E-flat major String Quintet, and Cello Concerto. He was keenly aware of the new musical experiences to be discovered in the land far from his beloved Bohemian home when he wrote, “The musician must prick up his ears for music. When he walks he should listen to every whistling boy, every street singer or organ grinder. I myself am often so fascinated by these people that I can scarcely tear myself away.” But he missed his home and, while he was composing the Cello Concerto, looked eagerly forward to returning. He opened his heart in a letter to a friend in Prague: “Now I am finishing the finale of the Violoncello Concerto. If I could work as free from cares as at Vysoká [site of his country home], it would have been finished long ago. Oh, if only I were in Vysoká again!” The Concerto might just as well have been written in a Czech café as in an East 17th Street apartment.

Elements of both Dvořák’s American experiences and his longing for home found their way into the Cello Concerto, the last of his works composed in this country. The inspiration to begin what became one of the greatest concertos in the literature was a performance by the New York Philharmonic in March 1894 at which Victor Herbert (the Victor Herbert of operetta fame, who was then also teaching at the National Conservatory) played his own Second Cello Concerto. That work convinced Dvořák that the cello was a viable solo instrument, something about which he had been unsure despite the assurances of Hanuš Wihan, cello professor at the Prague Conservatory, who had long been urging his fellow faculty member to write a piece for the instrument. (Apparently Brahms, Dvořák’s friend and mentor, had a similar mistrust of the cello as a solo instrument. When he first saw Dvořák’s score he wondered, “Why on earth didn’t I know that one can write a violoncello concerto like this? If I had only known, I would have written one long ago!”) Dvořák had tried to mollify Wihan in 1891 with two recital numbers—the Rondo in G minor and Silent Woods, an arrangement of a piano piece from 1884—but the cellist continued to pester him for a full-scale concerto until his request finally bore fruit four years later. Dvořák asked Wihan for his comments on the score (which Dvořák largely ignored) and they read through the piece together privately in September 1895, soon after Dvořák had returned home, but Wihan, despite the composer’s pleading, was unable to give either the work’s world or Prague premiere because of already-scheduled conflicts. Those privileges fell instead to the young English virtuoso Leo Stern, who introduced the work on March 19, 1896 with the London Philharmonic and gave its first performance in Dvořák’s home city three weeks later with the Czech Philharmonic, both conducted by the composer. Wihan first played the Concerto publicly at The Hague in January 1899 and regularly thereafter, including a performance in Budapest under the composer’s direction on December 20, 1899.

With its wealth of melodic ideas, glowing orchestration and emotional immediacy, Dvořák’s Cello Concerto occupies the pinnacle of the solo literature for the instrument. The opening movement is in sonata form, with both themes presented by the orchestra before the entry of the soloist. The first theme, heard immediately in the clarinets, not only contains the principal melody but also serves to establish the importance given to the wind instruments throughout the work, their tone colors serving as an excellent foil to the rich sonorities of the cello. “One of the most beautiful melodies ever composed for the horn” is how Sir Donald Tovey described the D major second theme. The cello’s entrance points up the virtuosic yet songful character of the solo part. The effect of the music for the soloist is enhanced by the use of the instrument’s burnished upper register, a technique Dvořák had learned from Victor Herbert’s concerto.

Otakar Šourek, the composer’s biographer, described the second movement as a “hymn of deepest spirituality and amazing beauty.” It is in three-part form (A–B–A). A poignant bit of autobiography is attached to the composition of this movement: While working on its middle section, Dvořák received news that his beloved sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzová, who had aroused in him a secret passion early in his life, was seriously ill. He showed his concern by using one of Josefina’s favorite pieces as the theme for the central portion of this Adagio—his own song, "Let Me Wander Alone with My Dreams," Op. 82, No. 1. She died a month after he returned to Prague in April 1895, so he revised the finale to include another reference to the same song in the autumnal slow section just before the end of the work.

The finale is a rondo of dance-like nature. Following the second reprise of the theme, in B major, an Andante section recalls both the first theme of the opening movement and Josefina’s melody from the second. A brief, rousing restatement of the rondo theme led by the brass closes this majestic Concerto.

—Dr. Richard Rodda