A New Cello Concerto

Migratory geese and wartime exile inspire a new work for Robert Cohen

by Hilary WhitneyThursday, 05 November 2009

Sally Beamish: 'I notated quite a few bird songs – such as black kites, warblers and corncrakes – and used them in the music'Ashley Coombes

Commissioning orchestral music is not for the faint-hearted. It is notoriously difficult to fund and satisfaction is by no means guaranteed. This however did not deter the leading British cellist Robert Cohen from asking the composer Sally Beamish to write a work to mark his fiftieth birthday, and on 12 November Cohen will give the world premiere of Beamish’s Cello Concerto No 2, The Song Gatherer, with the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä at Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis, with a British premiere planned next year.

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