Contemporary Classics April 30, 2019 - Celebrating the Solo Cello

Peter Susser: Cello Suite

After hearing a cello work that Peter Susser wote for Eric Bartlett, Laura Usiskin, a cellist who graduated from the Columbia-Juilliard program, asked Susser to write a cello suite for her album, Reimagining Bach. Although the time frame Susser was given to compose the piece overlapped with his teaching appointment at the Reid Hall Art and Music Hum program, Susser decided to do both at the same time.  Throughout that summer session, he would wake up in the early hours before class, write music, and then proceed with his professorial life in Paris. “When you have a deadline, you don’t worry about what your ideal time is,” he says. “You just are inspired and you work and you get it done.”

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Laura Block, a student of Susser at that Reid Hall Art and Music Hum program  writes “The suite, comprised of six movements, varies in tempo and ambience, ranging from triumphant to soothing to ominous. Susser’s inspirations seem truly unbound. The fourth movement, “Epic,” for example, is an homage to the TV show Game of Thrones, wherein the characters mourn the deaths of their loved ones. The movement begins slowly and somberly, eventually building in volume and pitch to express deep sorrow. In another vein, the fifth movement, “The Curb” was influenced (albeit loosely) by electronic dance music. It is dissonant and irregular and evocative of of Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.”   The 6 movements are I. Noble, II. Double Edge, III. Sweet Song, IV. Epic, V. The Curb, and VI. Sixths

Laura Block writes “The [cello] suite, comprised of six movements, varies in tempo and ambience, ranging from triumphant to soothing to ominous. Susser’s inspirations seem truly unbound. The fourth movement, “Epic,” for example, is an homage to the TV show Game of Thrones, wherein the characters mourn the deaths of their loved ones. The movement begins slowly and somberly, eventually building in volume and pitch to express deep sorrow. In another vein, the fifth movement, “The Curb” was influenced (albeit loosely) by electronic dance music. It is dissonant and irregular and evocative of of Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

 

Joe L. Alexander - Ce cE cello for solo cello and sound file   

 

Britten: Third Suite for Cello Op. 87          

Benjamin Britten composed the Third Suite in 1971,[6] inspired by Rostropovich's playing of the unaccompanied Cello Suites of Bach. Rostropovich premiered the suite at the Snape Maltings, 21 December 1974.   The Third Suite is in nine movements, performed without pause.  The work incorporates four Russian themes, including three arrangements of folksongs by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, reminiscent of Beethoven's use of Russian themes in the Razumovsky quartets. The final Russian tune, stated simply at the end of the set, is the Kontakion, the Russian Orthodox Hymn for the Dead

 

Philip Glass - Partita No. 1 for solo cello          

Glass’s love for the cello goes back to the days of his youth, when he worked in his father’s record store and began listening to Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello. But it was his personal romance with the cellist Wendy Sutter that inspired him to compose the Partita No. 1, “Songs and Poems” (2007)

 

Penderecki: Divertimento for Cello Solo     

The Divertimento is a 1994 composition for solo cello by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. The piece is well known for its typical chromatic melodies and for its recurrent use of pizzicati and col legno.   This actually has 6 movements but there is no complete recording of the work.   Here are 5 movements: Notturno,  Sarabande (Johann Sebastian Bach in memoriam),  Scherzo & Serenade & Tempo di Valse

 

Ligeti: Sonata for Solo Cello

The Sonata for Solo Cello is an unaccompanied cello sonata written by György Ligeti between 1948 and 1953. The Sonata comprises two disjunct movements: Dialogo – Adagio, rubato, cantabile and Capriccio – Presto con slancio.  Ligeti reports being influences by many composers and the Dialogo is considered closer to Kodály, and the Capriccio is more Bartókian in style.