Élégie, Op. 251
- Instrumentation
- Cello, Piano
- Composed
- 1945
- Duration
- 4'35''
- Publisher
- Boosey & Hawkes
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About this piece
Milhaud wrote this Élégie for cello and piano in January 1945 at Mills College in Oakland, California, where he taught after leaving occupied France. He dedicated it to the cellist Edmund Kurtz, who gave the premiere at Town Hall in New York on 16 November 1945. Boosey & Hawkes published it in London in 1946, and the 12-page edition is still in print. A single slow movement of about four and a half minutes, it is one of Milhaud's most compact cello pieces, written in the same year as his Second Cello Concerto, Op. 255. Recordings include those by Matt Haimovitz and Alexander Baillie.
Technical overview
A single slow elegiac movement of about four and a half minutes. It calls for a sustained, expressive cantabile line over Milhaud's harmonically adventurous piano writing.