Ellen’s new Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, just given its world premiere performances by Zuill Bailey and the South Florida Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sebrina Maria Alfonso, has received rave reviews:
“Composer Zwilich adds to her musical legacy with Cello Concerto premiere,” wrote Lawrence Budmen in South Florida Classical Review, who called the work “an important addition to the cello concerto literature.”
“Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is one of America’s preeminent composers, with a consistently excellent body of work in multiple genres spanning nearly five decades — including another standout that had its world premiere on Thursday night with the South Florida Symphony Orchestra and cellist Zuill Bailey.” Read the full review here.
“Zwilich’s Snazzy Cello Concerto Soars In Florida,” wrote John Fleming in Classical Voice North America. “Zwilich gives the solo cello plenty of nimble, virtuosic passagework, but her writing is always concise and to the point. Never did Bailey lapse into empty brilliance for the sake of mere display. There was nary a wasted note. The three movements, played without pause, had a narrative drive and coherence stemming from an inner pulse that propelled the music. If anything, this expressive, impeccably detailed, technically sophisticated work felt a bit too brief, leaving me wanting to hear more.
“Certainly, the concerto contains a strong jazz quality, with sparkling, toe-tapping orchestration that recalls Gershwin and Bernstein, and there’s a clarinet lick or two right out of the Benny Goodman playbook. Zwilich’s harmonies are elegant and unpredictable, even including what sounded like a suggestion of Minimalism popping up here and there. At times, Bailey seemed to be channeling his inner Sonny Rollins, the cello honking and shouting like a tenor sax. A highlight was the back and forth between cello soloist and individual players in the orchestra, such as Bailey’s deft exchanges with flute and bluesy, muted trumpet. An eight-measure dialogue between cello and English horn in the third movement was sublime.” Read the full review here.
“The blues haunts Zwilich’s fine new cello concerto,” wrote Dennis Rooney in Palm Beach Arts Paper. “Zwilich (b. 1939), a native Floridian, is a distinguished American composer whose career broke new ground for her gender (the first woman to receive a doctoral degree in composition from the Juilliard School, the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in music) and whose works are widely performed and have received numerous awards. Among them are more than a dozen concertos for strings, winds and brass.
“In both her Double Concerto and Triple Concerto, the cello was featured but her newest work places it front and center. It proved a congenial vehicle for the soloist, Zuill Bailey. The sound of his Gofriller “Rosette” cello of 1693 soared splendidly in the acoustics of the Amaturo Theatre at the Broward Center for the Arts in Fort Lauderdale.
“The concerto’s three linked movements suggested a meditation on melodic gestures from the American vernacular. The blues hovered over the work allusively, but the musical materials always generated multifaceted meanings that were compelling yet evanescent, ranging from gently introspective to aggressive. An agitated, bustling motto introduced the successive sections. Throughout, the mood was thoughtful but not elegiac.
“Technical challenges are plentiful in the solo part, although the work’s lineaments are not those of a display vehicle. Only in the final movement did a cadenza-like episode emerge. The 47-year-old Bailey (a pupil of Stephen Kates at Peabody and Joel Krosnick at Juilliard, and currently cello professor at the University of Texas at El Paso) played it sympathetically, with attractive color and expressiveness.” Read the full review here.