Cello Concerto in A major (Dvořák)

  1. Home
  2. Wiki

Antonín Dvořák wrote his first Cello Concerto in A major, B. 10 in 1865.

Background

[edit]

Unlike his famous B minor Cello Concerto, Op. 104, Dvořák's A major Concerto is traditionally overlooked, so much so that the later work is only rarely called "No. 2." There are two reasons for this fate for the three-movement earlier piece: Dvořák left it in piano-score form, un-orchestrated; and it sprawls to some 55 minutes,[1] with outer movements about 25 and 21 minutes long, respectively.

Written for cellist Ludevít Peer (1847-1904), who apparently moved abroad to Germany with the music,[1] it was rediscovered by composer Günter Raphael in 1925, years after Dvořák's death. This autograph version was offered for sale to the Czech state but was declined due to the high cost; it was later purchased by the British Museum and since 1973 has been in the British Library's collection.[1]

Jan Burian [cs] gave its first performance (after revising the cello part) on 26 April 1929.[1]

Raphael orchestrated and heavily edited it in the late 1920s, making it more his own than Dvořák's.[2] The 1970s brought a second editor, the Dvořák expert and curator Jarmil Burghauser, who, along with cellist Miloš Sádlo, prepared a more lightly rethought account published two ways: in an orchestration by Burghauser; and in the original piano-score form with cuts corresponding to the new orchestrated version. Burghauser took the liberty of shortening both outer movements. One can sample all three editions, since there are Supraphon recordings available (original and Burghauser) as well as Steven Isserlis's frequent touring with the Raphael version, released on Hyperion Records.

Recordings

[edit]

In 2010, the Czech cellist Tomáš Jamník [cs] recorded a new edition of the A major concerto with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra on the Supraphon label.[4] The performers here shorten the concerto to 35 minutes, sometimes following Burghauser, but sometimes, following extensive research by themselves, finding their own solutions to some of the problems caused by only having the piano score, rather than a full orchestral version. After completion of the piano score, Dvořák never went back to his "Concerto for 'Cello with piano accompaniment".

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c d "Concerto for Cello and Piano in A major, B10". Antonin Dvorak website (www.antonin-dvorak.cz). Retrieved 2025-10-26.
  2. ^ John Clapham (1979). Dvořák. New York: Norton. ISBN 9780393012040. ...writes that Raphael's "edition" is "so unlike Dvořák's original, that it must be regarded as a travesty of Dvořák's intentions."
  3. ^ "Ramón Jaffé". ramonjaffe.de.[dead link] Archived 2021-01-14 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ "Dvořák: Complete Cello Works – Tomáš Jamník, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tomáš Netopil". supraphon.com. Retrieved 27 October 2025.
[edit]