Antonin Dvorak: Concerto in D-Major for Double Bass and Orchestra, Arr. Dominik and Wolfram Wagner

Dominik Wagner: double bass
Kiron Atom-Tellian: piano
Tonmeister, Audio- and Video-Production: Nikolaus Luksch
Camera: Antonia Luksch

Everybody knows Dvorak’s famous b-minor cello concerto but barely anyone knows his a-major cello concerto. He wrote this piece in 1865, the same year as his first two symphonies. Unfortunately, the back then 24 years old Dvorak managed to lose the sheet music of all three pieces.

Shortly after finishing the first version of the cello concerto (unorchestrated, only with the piano part, not structured well and 55 minutes long), an orchestra colleague took the sheet music to Germany where he had found a job. Dvorak sent his first symphony to a composing competition in Leipzig. He never heard back from them and never got the score sent back. He only got to see the second Symphony again around 20 years after writing it. He immediately revised it (like he did with a lot of his early works) and then got it premiered.

This first cello concerto had been on my mind for about 10 years now. Last year I finally decided to get the best out of this fantastic material. To do that my father (Wolfram Wagner, composer, professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna) and I spent months analyzing the piece and afterwards making our own version. Just through cuts, we made the overall structure clearer, kept all the strong places and brought it to a length of 32 minutes. Afterwards, I transposed it to D-Major so the registers would fit ideally to the strengths of the double bass.

Recorded at Palais Ehrbar on January 4th 2022.
This recording was supported by the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation.

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