Best Cello Concerto

Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, was composed in 1919 and is generally regarded as his final major orchestral work. Cast in four movements, it opens with a recitative-like statement for the solo cello and uses a comparatively restrained, elegiac orchestral language. Its early recept...

Antonin Dvorak composed his Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, in New York during 1894 and 1895, and Leo Stern gave the premiere in London in 1896. Written in three movements for solo cello and a full Romantic orchestra, it combines symphonic development with Czech-inflected lyricism and demanding...

Joseph Haydn's Cello Concerto in C major, Hob. VIIb:1, is a three-movement Classical concerto probably written during his service to the Esterhazy court. Although Haydn listed the work in his own thematic catalogue, its score was considered lost until a set of parts was identified in the Prague Nati...

Joseph Haydn's Cello Concerto No. 2 in D major, Hob. VIIb:2, is a three-movement concerto generally dated to 1783. Written in the Classical style, it combines lyrical solo writing with technically demanding passages, including rapid figurations and playing in the cello's upper register. It is one of...

Tout un monde lointain... is a concertante work for cello and orchestra by French composer Henri Dutilleux, completed in 1970 for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Its five connected movements carry titles drawn from poems by Charles Baudelaire: Énigme, Regard, Houles, Miroirs, and Hymne. Rather than f...

Witold Lutoslawski's Cello Concerto was composed for Mstislav Rostropovich and first performed in 1970 with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Downes. The work unfolds as a dramatic interaction between the solo cello and orchestral groups, beginning with an extended unaccompanied...

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33, is a concert work for solo cello and orchestra composed in 1876 and written for cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen. An original theme is followed by a sequence of contrasting variations that combine Classical-era clarity and balance with Roma...

Camille Saint-Saëns composed his Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33, in 1872 for the French cellist Auguste Tolbecque. Rather than separating the music into three conventional movements, the concerto unfolds as a compact, continuous work whose linked sections move from an urgent opening through...

Robert Schumann's Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129, was composed in 1850, shortly after he became municipal music director in Dusseldorf. The concerto links its three movements without conventional pauses and treats the cello as a lyrical partner to an often restrained orchestra. Schumann did not...

Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Cello Concerto No. 2 in G major, Op. 126, in 1966 for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who gave its premiere in Moscow with the USSR State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yevgeny Svetlanov. The work has three movements and opens with an extended slow movement, followed...

Schelomo is a work for solo cello and orchestra by Swiss-born American composer Ernest Bloch, completed in 1916 and subtitled "Rhapsodie Hebraique." The title refers to Solomon, and Bloch described the cello as the voice of the biblical king while the orchestra represents the surrounding world and i...

Sergei Prokofiev's Sinfonia Concertante in E minor, Op. 125, is a large-scale work for solo cello and orchestra. Prokofiev developed it from his earlier Cello Concerto, Op. 58, while working closely with cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who gave the first performance in 1952. The three-movement score...

Benjamin Britten's Symphony for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 68, is a four-movement concert work composed in 1963 for the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Although commonly treated as a cello concerto, its title reflects the unusually integrated relationship between soloist and orchestra and its symphonic...

Gyorgy Ligeti's Cello Concerto is an orchestral work composed in 1966 for cellist Siegfried Palm. Its two connected movements avoid the conventional pattern of a virtuoso soloist set against a clearly separate orchestra, instead embedding the cello within shifting fields of instrumental color. The s...

Sofia Gubaidulina's Canticle of the Sun is a 1997 composition for solo cello, chamber choir, percussion, and celesta, written for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. It sets the devotional text traditionally attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, praising creation through references to the sun, moon, ele...

Notes on Light is a cello concerto by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, composed in 2006 for solo cello and orchestra. Its five connected movements explore changing relationships between the soloist and orchestral textures, using shifts in timbre, density, register, and resonance characteristic of Sa...

Kol Nidrei, Op. 47, is a concert work for cello and orchestra composed by Max Bruch and published in 1881. Subtitled an adagio on Hebrew melodies, it opens with material associated with the Kol Nidre declaration heard on Yom Kippur and later uses another traditional melody. Bruch shaped these themes...

William Walton's Cello Concerto is a three-movement work for solo cello and orchestra, composed in the 1950s for the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. Piatigorsky gave its premiere in Boston in 1957 with Charles Munch conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The concerto belongs to Walton's later output...

Mieczysław Weinberg's Cello Concerto in C minor, Op. 43, is a work for solo cello and orchestra composed in the late 1940s by the Polish-born Soviet composer. Its four connected movements combine lyrical solo writing, marchlike episodes, and themes shaped by Jewish musical idioms. The concerto belon...

Unsuk Chin's Cello Concerto is a contemporary orchestral work written for the German cellist Alban Gerhardt, who gave its first performance in 2009 with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov. The concerto treats the soloist as both a lyrical voice and a source of sharply artic...

Édouard Lalo's Cello Concerto in D minor is a Romantic concerto completed in 1876 and written for the Belgian cellist Adolphe Fischer. Cast in three movements, it places the solo cello in frequent dialogue with the orchestra and combines dramatic outer sections with lyrical, dance-like episodes. The...

Christopher Rouse's Cello Concerto is a work for solo cello and orchestra composed for cellist Yo-Yo Ma. The concerto uses a continuous, dramatically intense design in which demanding solo writing is set against a large and often forceful orchestral texture. It received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for M...

Luigi Boccherini's Cello Concerto in B-flat major, G.482, is an eighteenth-century work for solo cello and orchestra by a composer who was also a prominent virtuoso cellist. Its three-movement design combines lyrical melodic writing with agile passagework that displays the instrument's upper registe...

Dance is a five-movement work for cello and orchestra composed by Anna Clyne in 2019. It was written for cellist Inbal Segev, who gave its premiere, and each movement takes its title from a line in a poem by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi. The score combines prominent lyrical writing for the sol...

Alberto Ginastera's Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 36, is a large-scale work for solo cello and orchestra completed in 1968 and later revised by the Argentine composer. It belongs to Ginastera's later modernist output, using dissonant harmony, complex rhythm, extended instrumental color, and techniques a...

Oration: Concert Piece for Cello and Orchestra is a large-scale work by British composer Frank Bridge, completed in 1930. Written as a continuous concert piece rather than a conventional multi-movement concerto, it gives the solo cello an extended, speech-like role against a dark and often turbulent...

Elliott Carter's Cello Concerto is a single-movement orchestral work completed in 2001 during the American composer's late creative period. The solo cello engages the orchestra through rapidly changing exchanges, contrasting instrumental characters, and the stratified rhythms associated with Carter'...

Rautavaara's second cello concerto, a late-period work, exemplifies his mature neo-Romantic idiom with lush orchestration and characteristic spiritual depth.

The Cello Concerto in B minor, RV 424, is a Baroque concerto by Antonio Vivaldi for solo cello, strings, and continuo. It belongs to a group of roughly two dozen surviving cello concertos by Vivaldi and follows the fast, slow, fast three-movement plan common in his concertos. The work contrasts agil...