Ned Rorem: Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Contents: Piano Concerto No. 2; Cello Concerto: 1. Curtain Raise, 2. There and Back, 3. Three Queries, One Response, 4. Competitive Chaos, 5. A Single Tone, a Dozen Implications, 6. One Coin, Two Sides, 7. Valse Rappelée, 8. Adrift.
Russell Platt wrote in the New Yorker: "[T]he cello remains the most versatile member of the string family. … Ned Rorem has been a lyrical presence in American music for more than half a century, but rarely with such power as in the Cello Concerto (2002), part of a new disk by the conductor José Serebrier and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (Naxos). Deftly scored for a pared-down chamber orchestra, it is the finest of Rorem’s many concertos, consistently inventive and shot through with piercing melancholy. The somewhat self-effacing soloist, Wen-Sinn Yang, is buoyed by the suave sounds that Serebrier coaxes from his group; Simon Mulligan is a more decisive presence in the merrily Gershwinesque Piano Concerto No. 2 (1951), the album’s opening flourish" ("Classical Notes: Cello Love," 3/31/08, p. 34).