Web comment by the composer:
"One day in October 2003, the phone rang. I picked up the phone, said my name and heard a voice say: "Hello, my name is Mats Lidström and I am a cellist and live in London. I have heard your Trumpet Concerto and would like to commission a Cello Concerto of yours to be premiered by The BBC Symphony Orchestra here in London in the spring of 2005. Would you have time for that?" Yaaaaa...yeah I replied as I wondered who was driving it with me. But the question was meant to be the start of our collaboration. The initiative for the cello concerto came from him and the London project From-Sweden.com, for which he is also the artistic director Orchestra together with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra entered into the collaboration and made a joint order for the concert.
Mat's spontaneity, wonderful humor, wonderful musical intuition, his feeling for the cello's entire range of expression, his captivating playing and his never-ending energy and flow of ideas have from the very beginning strongly and obviously inspired me to write this cello concerto. Our many and for me extremely educational meetings around the instrument have been intensely colored by questions about the cello's dynamics, scope, character and technical possibilities and limitations, but also by a common curiosity to constantly try different alternatives and solutions. All this makes me feel that I was able to really work through the cello concerto on a detailed level both in the solo part and in the orchestral movement.
There have been many emails and phone calls and at one point I emailed a computer file with notes to Mats. Ten minutes later there was a call from London and on the other end of the phone connection Mats shouted: "Listen now!!".....and then he played a part of the solo part directly from the computer screen! An hour later it rang again and he asked me to change the fingering in one measure of the solo part: "Remove the number two above the g and instead write a thumb on the first note and everything will work itself out later. I'm very proud of that solution !" When Mats called that time in October 2003, he also said that it would feel good if the cello concerto could be called just the cello concerto, without any other names. And so it turned out, and the cello must sound like a cello.
The lyrical and expressive expression in the solo part alternates in wave movements throughout the work and forms a slightly improvised and unpredictable form. The cantabile has a central role but is accentuated by both powerfully dramatic and fast airy parts. It also feels particularly personal to me to write for the cello in particular because the instrument sounds daily here at home, in the hands of my 14-year-old Louise."
Rolf Martinsson Sound samples:
Mats Lidström, solo
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, cond. Mats Rondin
Daphne 1029
