Darkest/Blackest Cello Concerto?

[Florestan]

75 % black... 

[Karl Henning]

I'm looking for a really loud painting, one with no volume control.

Would you believe, a collage that goes up to 11?

[snyprrr]

Yes they were, and it wasn't funny, buster!   

How about the Elgar Cello Concerto?

Well, I'll put it this way. The Elgar and the Mysakovsky both have the one thing that the 'Blackest' would need to have: at least 10 seconds of the big, sweeping melody that signals 'irretrievable loss'. However, both of those CCs didn't have access to the same language as, say, Schnittke.


someguy thinks he's being funny, but he know perfectly well what I mean in musical terms. The Cello is a darkly toned instrument, with a HISTORY of expressing a profound seeking and searching (as the human heart hears things), so, it would be totally reasonable to find the most anguished and bleak music to be found in a CC.

The point of departure for this Thread is the Schnittke, which is an overt expression of the aims of this Thread. I want something MORE !!

Had Elgar written a Schnittke Concerto, maybe!

[Florestan]

The Cello is a darkly toned instrument, with a HISTORY of expressing a profound seeking and searching (as the human heart hears things), so, it would be totally reasonable to find the most anguished and bleak music to be found in a CC.

If you put it this way then forget about Cello and look for viola da gamba instead... Jordi Savall is your man.

[snyprrr]

I'm not turning up a Pettersson cello concerto.

That's kind of it, isn't it?




Rouse? eh,...mm,...sorta, not quite...

Just checking the Aho. It's loud, but is it BLACK?

Nordgren? Does he have one? There's a candidate. What other Nordic CCs do we have?

[snyprrr]

Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme.

(Okay, just kidding.)

Ibert!

But seriously Karl (cue Cary Grant accent)

[kyjo]

The cello concertos of Schnittke, Braga Santos (v. different from Symphonies 1-4), and Leighton could all qualify as "dark" and "black".

[mn dave]

I'd like to hear something in a chartreuse.

[Dax]

How about Bernd Aloys Zimmermann's 2nd cello concerto (in the form of a pas de trois)? Anyone know it? My favourite piece of his.

[kyjo]

How about Bernd Aloys Zimmermann's 2nd cello concerto (in the form of a pas de trois)? Anyone know it? My favourite piece of his.

I don't believe I know that one. Thanks for the tip!

[Mirror Image]

How about Bernd Aloys Zimmermann's 2nd cello concerto (in the form of a pas de trois)? Anyone know it? My favourite piece of his.

Yes, that work is a dip into pure madness.

[Mirror Image]

In addition to the Schnittke CCs, I would nominate Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 2 and Britten's Cello Symphony.

[pjme]

Since long my favorite(s):

André Jolivet nr 2 - written for Rostropovitch.

It is scored for cello, stringquintet and stringorchestra.

http://youtube.com/v/5YjojYKtUc0
(first mov.)

The first celloconcerto isn't a light, happy affair either.

http://youtube.com/v/GvECJXEs5M8
(first movement)

From Musicweb/ Hubert Culot:

"..... in the First Cello Concerto, Jolivet, now in his full maturity and in full command of his skills, really achieves his Jeune France ideals, in invigorating musical terms full of contrasts, arresting sonorities and rhythmic alertness. In the first and second movements of the First Cello Concerto, the music conjures mysterious, ominous, primeval visions, no less so in the extraordinary second movement; really a jungle in sounds that also includes a remarkable cadenza. The third movement, a brilliant moto perpetuo, has the dancing quality often associated with Jolivet's final movements, and rushes headlong towards its mightily assertive conclusion. Suite en concert for solo cello was completed some time later".

and

"....This led to the completion of the Second Cello Concerto written for and first performed by Rostropovich. Though unmistakably by the same composer, the Second Cello Concerto is poles apart from its predecessor. First, it is scored for strings (including a solo quintet surrounding the soloist). Second, it is on the whole more lyrical. The music, as demanding as ever, fully displays Jolivet's orchestral mastery; for, while renouncing the hugely varied sound palette of the First Cello Concerto, Jolivet conjures some remarkably imaginative and powerfully expressive string writing. As far as I am concerned, Jolivet's cello concertos undoubtedly belong to his greatest achievements, though they are still unjustly and shamefully neglected by cellists, which is hard to understand, when one thinks of the comparative popularity of Dutilleux's and Lutosławski's equally demanding and rewarding concertos".



P.

[relm1]

I would recommend Aaron Jay Kernis's Cello Concerto "colored field".  It is well conceived and quite dark and intense but lyrical too.  Note it also exists in an English Horn variant with the same name.  I quite like his music.

[Sergeant Rock]

I would recommend Aaron Jay Kernis's Cello Concerto "colored wheel".

I think you mean Colored Field. Color Wheel is a concerto for orchestra.

Sarge

[relm1]

I think you mean Colored Field. Color Wheel is a concerto for orchestra.

Sarge

Right.  Fixed... Thanks

[some guy]

If a painter reduces his palette to a single color, then fine.



If a composer reduces his sound world to a single chord, then fine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBmBAtGva4Y

But doesn't it seem kinda presumptuous (and a little repugnant) for a listener to reduce the complexities of someone else's piece to a single thing, whether a color or an emotion or whatever?

Is life so utterly and appallingly complex that to deal with it we have to reduce it always to one or two simple things?

Again, just to make the distinction plain: for a maker to reduce his or her own choices in order to create is one thing. For a listener/observer to describe everything, whether simple or not, in the most simple and reductionist of terms is quite another.

Or at least that's what it says in this post.

[pjme]

Of topic, but for really magnificent, dark, yet wondrous cellosonatas: go for Mathijs Vermeulen 1&2!
Great recording on MDG . Doris Hochscheid, cello and Frans van Ruth, piano.

Both works are in two movements . The first sonata is written in 1918 under "the immediate impetus of Debussy's death", the approaching end of WWI and the love for his wife.
the second sonata he started working on in 1927, but completed it only after a hiatus of 10 years! Paul Tortelier played the (hastily prepared...) premiere with pianist Lia pala in 1943.
I quote from the booklet: " the melodies of Vermeulen are pure expression of joy, optimism, yearning and expectation. ....
The melodies are no longer tonal....they are creative motion. Simultaneity of different, individual actions, plurality of individual voices: this is Vermeulen's idea of a polymelodic system.
Difficult music, of course, but it grabs me each time I listen...

Another great celloconcerto is the one by Herman D.Koppel (from 1952).

[Kontrapunctus]

Karel Husa's Concerto is pretty dark, and the opening is horror-music black!

[some guy]

Well, OK, then. Reductionism it is.