Herbert: Cello Concertos Nos. 1, 2, & Irish Rhapsody

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Irish-born Victor Herbert was one of the most celebrated names in American music in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A cellist, conductor, and composer of light operas, he was also a recording artist. His two cello concertos are full of gracious melodies, the D major having a song-like slow movement and a spirited polonaise finale that earned praise at its 1885 première in Stuttgart. The E minor concerto, scored for a large orchestra, is more tightly constructed then the first and it was hearing this work that inspired Herbert’s superior at the National Conservatory in New York, Antonín Dvorák, to write his own great B minor cello concerto.