Zuill Bailey on the Dvorak Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104
Embrace the emotional sweep of this epic piece
"The Dvorak is the torch, the greatest thing we have for cello and orchestra," says cellist Zuill Bailey during an interview from his home in El Paso, where he works as a cello professor at the University of Texas and serves as music director of the El Paso Pro Musica Chamber Music Festival. He first performed the Dvorak concerto in 1987 and recently recorded it in concert with the Indianapolis Symphony for an upcoming CD.
"It is the gala event. It's the most celebrated piece in all of the cello literature and one of the most celebrated concertos for any instrument," he says. "It really gives everyone [in the orchestra] a moment to shine. It is a great symphony with a wonderful cello feature in it, so the conductor is creating this wonderful sound world and guiding solo French horn, solo flute, solo viola and solo oboe; the concertmaster has a solo, the cello section gets a chance to shine, and that's before the cello soloist even comes in."
And then there's the emotional sweep. "Dvorak wrote that piece under duress—he was venting out of his system a lot of emotion at a time in his life when at the height of his powers the longtime love of his life was dying," he says. "He started rewriting the work to weave in the tunes, the songs, that they shared. The end is very much a kind of dying sequence, but also an ascension into heaven. And the whole first movement is just a triumphant charge forward in celebration. It has everything in it.
This article, "Zuill Bailey on the Dvorak Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104," is part of the Strings Archive, which you can access with a paid site subscription.
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