Update Title: 63948611-0705-40E0-8CF1-3D17444CD949

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This concerto had its beginnings at a dinner party. It was a Sunday evening and we had all been to Gerard Schwarz's afternoon concert at the Y. He had conducted my Concerto 4 Quattro, a work dedicated to him, and Janos Starker had played Donhnçnyi's Konzertstck. At dinner the hostess seated Starker and me at the end of the table, separated only by Schwarz's young daughter. Someone at the other end of the table, seeing us engaged in intense conversation, jokingly said: "How about a Starer-Starker collaboration?" We both laughed, but the germ took how.

Having heard Starker play that afternoon, I was most impressed by his natural elegance and his power to sustain a musical idea and mood. This latter quality gave me the impulse to write a continuous piece for him rather than one in separate movements.

My concerto begins with the cello alone, in a meditative-improvisatory mood. The orchestra joins slowly and in groups. The mood of the opening prevails until a clacking wood block changes it to a presto in alternating eight and ten-eight time. This scherzando section is in a vague ABA form with a more evenly paced middle part. Another unaccompanied cello passage leads to a melodious larghetto, which is followed by an energetic allegro risoluto. Near the end of the concerto the main thematic ideas of all preceding sections come by in a momentary retrospective and the work ends with a coda of increasing velocity. The premiere of my Cello Concerto was on 7 May 1988 with Janos Starker as soloist and Gerard Schwarz conducting the New York Chamber Symphony. --Robert Starer

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