Schumann: Cello Concerto | Jean-Guihen Queyras & the Freiburger Barockorchester

Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras plays the solo section in the performance of Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129 with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra (FBO) conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado. The concert took place in 2014 in the Philharmonie Berlin. The Concerto for Cello in A minor was the first work that Robert Schumann composed in Düsseldorf. In 1850, Schumann was appointed the city’s Municipal Music Director, and he and his family received an enthusiastic welcome to the city on the Rhine. It was the first time Schumann had written a work for an instrument with which he himself was not familiar. In order to improve the cello passages, he sought advice from Robert Emil Bockmühl, a cello virtuoso who was famous at the time, but did not implement his suggestions into the final composition. The Cello Concerto did not conform to traditional ideas of a solo concerto and as such, no cellist was found to play it during Schumann’s lifetime. The piece only premiered four years afte