Concerto

The cello always had a special place in Zimmermann’s compositional output. He considered “the cello as an extraordinarily expressive and fascinatingly technically versatile string instrument par excellence” and “as the instrument which comes closest to the vox humana and is thereby best suited to song”. Zimmermann not only wrote compositions for solo cello, but also created two cello concertos, the first being a revision of an earlier work. Zimmermann’s second cello concerto is simultaneously an instrumental concerto and ballet music. The three “individuals” in this pas de trois are the solo instrument, the orchestra and ballet. The composition’s poetic and delicate tonal colour is created by the utilisation of instruments rarely employed in customary orchestral forces including mandolin, cimbalom and glass harp which form an instrumental unit with the harpsichord and harp.