Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber

Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...

's Cello Concerto in A minor

A minor

A minor is a minor scale based on A, consisting of the pitches A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. The harmonic minor scale raises the G to G...

 (Op

Opus number

An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...

. 22), completed on 22 November 1945, was the second of his three concertos (the first being his Violin Concerto

Violin concerto (Barber)

Samuel Barber completed his Violin Concerto, Op. 14, in 1939. It is a work in three movements, lasting about 22 minutes.-History:In 1939 Philadelphia industrialist Samuel Simeon Fels commissioned Barber to write a violin concerto for Fels' ward, Iso Briselli, a graduate from the Curtis Institute...

, his third is the Piano Concerto

Piano Concerto (Barber)

The Piano Concerto, Op. 38, by Samuel Barber was commissioned by the music publishing company G. Schirmer in honor of the hundredth anniversary of their founding...

). Barber was commissioned to write his concerto for Raya Garbousova

Raya Garbousova

Raya Garbousova was a cellist and teacher.-Early life & career:According to the biography contained in the program booklet for the 1997 memorial concert in her honor in DeKalb, Illinois, she made her formal debut in Moscow in 1923 and left the Soviet Union in 1925. She lived and performed in...

, an upstart Russian cellist, by Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Koussevitzky later said that he thought the work would be to the 20th century what Brahms' violin concerto was to the 19th century. While composing, Barber asked Garbousova to play her entire repertoire for him so that he could understand her performing style. The concerto is said to have fit her personality perfectly. Garbousova performed it with the Boston Symphony Orchestra

Boston Symphony Orchestra

The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...

 on 5 April 1946. The concerto won Barber the New York Music Critics' Circle Award in 1947. Garbousava refined her interpretation of the concerto until her retirement. The work has gradually crept into the repertoire of the cellistic community, but it has remained on the fringes, largely because of its extreme technical demands. It has recently been championed by a host of young soloists led by Wendy Warner

Wendy Warner

Wendy Warner is a cellist from Chicago, Illinois. She performs both as a soloist with major orchestras and as a chamber musician around the world.-Career:...

.

The work has three movements

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

:

1. Allegro moderato
2. Andante sostenuto
3. Molto allegro e appassionato

The concerto is scored for 2 flutes, oboe

Oboe

The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...

, English horn, 2 clarinet

Clarinet

The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

s, bass clarinet

Bass clarinet

The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...

, 2 bassoon

Bassoon

The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...

s, 2 horn

Horn (instrument)

The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....

s, 3 trumpet

Trumpet

The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...

s, timpani

Timpani

Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...

, snare drum

Snare drum

The snare drum or side drum is a melodic percussion instrument with strands of snares made of curled metal wire, metal cable, plastic cable, or gut cords stretched across the drumhead, typically the bottom. Pipe and tabor and some military snare drums often have a second set of snares on the bottom...

, and strings

String instrument

A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...

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