Fantasia for Cello and Orchestra
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Orchestra
- Composed
- 1976
- Duration
- 20'
- Publisher
- G. Schirmer
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About this piece
Menotti, best known for operas such as The Medium and Amahl and the Night Visitors, wrote this single-movement Fantasia for the cellist Laurence Lesser under a Ford Foundation grant. Lesser gave the first performance in 1976 with the RAI Orchestra of Turin. It is a cello concerto in all but name, in a loosely developed sonata form and firmly in the Romantic tradition: Chandos's notes hear the ghost of Schumann's concerto in its melancholy first theme and traces of Elgar in the playful second, with Menotti's own voice in a dissonant chorale halfway through and in the finely crafted orchestration. Raphael Wallfisch made the premiere recording with the Spoleto Festival Orchestra under Richard Hickox (Chandos). Menotti was the life partner of Samuel Barber, whose Cello Sonata and Concerto are also in this database. G. Schirmer publishes a piano reduction with the solo part edited by Carter Brey.
Technical overview
One continuous movement (Allegro moderato) of about 15 to 20 minutes in loose sonata form, written in the idiom of the Romantic concerto, with a dissonant chorale at its centre.