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Photo Credit: Ian Ehm

Photo Credit: Julia Wesely

Elgar Cello Concerto

New York Philharmonic Sol Gabetta, cello
Orchestral Series
Friday, July 18, 2025 at 6pm Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater
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World-renowned cellist Sol Gabetta joins the New York Philharmonic for her "heartfelt and intimate" (Gramophone UK) interpretation of Elgar’s reflective Cello Concerto. Led by Jakub Hrůša, the program includes Dvořák’s revelrous Carnival Overture and Bartók’s popular Concerto for Orchestra. 

Featured Artists

Jakub Hrůša

conductor

Sol Gabetta

cello

Program Highlights

Jakub Hrůša, conductor
Sol Gabetta, cello

DVOŘÁK Carnival Overture
ELGAR Cello Concerto
BARTÓK Concerto for Orchestra

Young Musicians Summit Lobby Concert
5:10 PM | Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater Lobby


All artists, programs, and pricing subject to change.

Program Notes

Carnival, Op. 92 (1891)

(9 minutes)

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)

Carnival, Op. 92

Antonín Dvořák’s Carnival was the second in a triptych of concert overtures meant to portray impressions of what a human soul might experience, in both positive and negative aspects. Nature, Life, and Love was his original name for the set, which was to be published under the single opus number 91; but Dvořák soon decided to publish them with more distinct identities, and when they appeared in print it was as three separate pieces: In Nature’s Realm (with the opus number 91 all to itself, composed from March 31 to July 8, 1891), Carnival (Op. 92, written from July 28 to September 12), and Othello (Op. 93, begun that November and completed on January 18, 1892).

He used the title Life (Carnival) in his sketches for the second of these pieces, and then gave it the provisional name A Czech Carnival, but later he opted for the more general Carnival. It does indeed depict the high-spirited tumult of a festive carnival setting— J U L 140 Learn more at BravoVail.org 141 barkers and vendors, boisterous crowds, and even, in a gentle passage, what Dvořák said was “a pair of straying lovers.” In a letter to the publisher Fritz Simrock, Dvořák’s champion Johannes Brahms judged this work to be “merry” and remarked that “music directors will be thankful to you” for publishing the overtures, which they are. Dvořák conducted the joint premiere of the three pieces in Prague in April 1892, and six months later, on October 21, he included them in a program he led at Carnegie Hall in New York (featuring an orchestra including members of the New York Philharmonic), where he had recently moved. That event was billed as a celebration (nine days late) of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery” of America, but it also served to officially introduce New York’s music community to its distinguished new member.

Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85 (1918-19)

(29 minutes)

EDWARD ELGAR (1857-1934)

Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85
     Adagio—Moderato 
     Allegro molto
     Adagio
     Allegro ma non troppo

Edward Elgar was an essential composer of the Edwardian Era, the late-Imperialist moment of British history named after Edward VII, who on July 4, 1904, turned the composer into Sir Edward. But that world effectively ceased to exist by the end of World War I, and Elgar spent much of the War years in near-depression, mourning not only the devastation that had overtaken Europe but also how far his sympathies lay from the world as it had evolved, a world in which new names like Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Bartók had displaced Elgar’s as the flashpoints of musical excitement.

With the passage of years it becomes less important to listeners that Elgar’s scores of this period stood apart from the cutting edge of their time. In fact, he enjoyed an extraordinary surge of creativity as the War reached its conclusion, and in the brief span of 1918-19 he achieved not only the Cello Concerto but also three of his other greatest works, all in the minor mode: his E-minor Violin Sonata, E-minor String Quartet, and A-minor Piano Quintet. As it happened, Felix Salmond, one of the most distinguished cellists of his time, participated in the premieres of the Quartet and Quintet, as well as serving as soloist in the Concerto.

The Concerto failed at its premiere, done in by under-rehearsal; but in posterity it became appreciated as one of the finest cello concertos ever written. The conductor Adrian Boult rightly observed that in this piece the composer had “struck a new kind of music, with a more economical line, terser in every way” from the effusions of his earlier years. Elgar’s production slowed after this piece. One wonders what might have lain ahead if he had continued composing as industriously as he did in 1918-19.

INTERMISSION

Concerto for Orchestra (1943)

(40 minutes)

BÉLA BARTÓK (1881-1945)

Concerto for Orchestra
     Introduzione (Introduction)
     Giuoco delle coppie (Game of the Couples)
     Elegia (Elegy)
     Intermezzo interrotto (Interrupted Intermezzo)
     Finale

Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra towers as one of the summits of 20th-century symphonic music, but it is something of a miracle that the piece was written at all. Bartók was sick and depressed when he composed it. In 1940 he had moved from his warthreatened Hungary to New York, where he had trouble adapting to his new surroundings. By the summer of 1943 he was short of money, his health plunged (leukemia, it turned out), and he needed to be hospitalized. Two similarly displaced Hungarian friends, violinist Joseph Szigeti and conductor Fritz Reiner, convinced Serge Koussevitzky (conductor of the Boston Symphony) to commission Bartók to write a piece for the Boston orchestra. Bartók received essential funds and Koussevitzky got one of the century’s masterpieces. Bartók offered this comment about the piece’s name: “The title of this symphony-like orchestral work is explained by its tendency to treat single orchestral instruments in a concertante or soloistic manner. The ‘virtuoso’ treatment appears, for instance, in the fugato sections of the development of the first movement (brass instruments), or in the perpetuum mobile-like passage of the principal theme in the last movement (strings), and especially in the second movement, in which pairs of instruments consecutively appear with brilliant passages.” He also characterized the overall scheme of the piece: “The general mood of the work represents, apart from the jesting second movement, a gradual transition from the sternness of the first movement and the lugubrious death-song of the third to the life-assertion of the last one.” He attended the Boston premiere against his doctors’ advice, and the work’s enthusiastic reception would be a highlight of his career. “It was worth the while,” he reported succinctly.

Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater

530 S Frontage Rd E Vail, CO 81657 Venue information