THE STORY BEHIND: Barber's Cello Concerto

On February 12, Lina González-Granados and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra will present Scheherazade with cellist Oliver Herbert.

Title: Cello Concerto, op.22
Composer: Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Last time performed by the Rhode Island Philharmonic: This is a RI Philharmonic Orchestra premiere. In addition to a solo cello, this piece is scored for two flutes, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, two bassoons, two horns, three trumpets, timpani, percussion and strings.

The Story:

Although not so collaborative as theater or film, music is surely a collaborative art. At the heart of it is the partnership between composer and performer. If an orchestra is involved, this collaboration is multiplied by the conductor and all the musicians. Then there is the matter of patronage — an alliance of audience and art. Sometimes all of these relationships operate simultaneously to give the world a marvelous new musical work. That was the case with the Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra by Samuel Barber.
       
At the center of the collaboration stood Serge Koussevitzky (1874-1951), conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. During the war years of the 1940s, he had been encouraging the work of cellist Raya Garbousova, and he felt that premiering a work by a major composer would enhance her career greatly. She agreed. Koussevitzky approached Barber about the project and obtained a commitment for the $1,000 fee from John and Anne Brown of Providence, Rhode Island. Thus, by the end of 1944, a commission was put into motion in one of the great collaborations in American music.
       
The composer and artist worked closely. On the models of Brahms-Joachim, Tchaikovsky-Fitzhagen, and Stravinsky-Dushkin, Barber and Garbousova consulted often on technical passages to eliminate awkwardness and make them thoroughly idiomatic. Work went slowly at first during the early months of 1945. However, with spring and summer, progress on the concerto moved along well, so that by late September, the music was essentially finished and only in need of orchestration. Garbousova worked hard to learn this challenging music, but master it she did and gave a brilliant premiere in April 1946 with Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony.
       
Barber builds the first movement of the concerto mainly out of three themes. Two of these are strongly rhythmic, the second of which concentrates on only a few notes. (Thus, Barber anticipated the later work of Stravinsky and that of the post-modern “minimalists.”) The third main idea is a broadly lyrical theme. We hear all of these before the soloist enters, and they become the raw material for the cello to work out. In fact, the developmental alternations and combinations of these generates the tension between soloist and orchestra so necessary to the music’s fabric. The masterful solo cadenza leads to a final reprise of the basic ideas.
       
Gently rocking siciliano rhythms form the backdrop of the middle movement. The ongoing cantilena of the cello is echoed in the oboe and other instruments. Barber freely develops and comments on this melody in spinning out the rest of the movement.
       
Energetic, yet always under control, the music of the third movement now gives the cellist a full palette of material, both technical and expressive. Certain passages verge on atonality, again creating tension to be worked out between soloist and orchestra. The final allegro section is a mixture of perpetual motion rhythm and free virtuosity. Flickering references to the first movement also appear but then disappear in the forcible drive to the finish.

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