Concerto for Cello

Doron Toister - cello | Israel Symphony Orchestra Risohn-Lezion | Conductor: Noam Sheriff

The Cello Concerto was inspired by the prayer of the Day of Atonement, "Like the Clay in the Potter's Hand":

“Like the clay in the hand of the potter

Who thickens or thins it at his will,

So are we in Thy hand, gracious God,

Forgive our sin, thy covenant fulfil.”

The Concerto is an enlarged and developed version of my first instrumental piece written two years earlier for Cello and Piano. The relationship that develops between the ‘potter’ and the ‘clay’ is "a frame of reference" for the musical form chosen by me, whereby the ‘potter’ is represented by the soloist and the ‘clay’ by the orchestra.

In the course of the piece, the listener is exposed to the ever-changing relations between the two, from the struggle to give the formless idea (the clay) a clear and distinct shape through the complete identification of the creator with his material, until the moment the material becomes fully independent and free on its own right. Now it is the time of departing and separating, what remains is an echo – a reflection of the material in its creator’s mind, and then the material gradually disappears. It evaporates leaving the creator drained… until his next composition.

 The piece starts with a long prologue that merges organically with the first movement which has a serene and passionate nature. The second movement starting with a Sarabande-like lyrical theme soon gets very dramatic. The end of the movement brings again the memory of the first theme and flows almost uninterruptedly into the last movement. This is a very fast, polyrhythmically movement of a somewhat Eastern character. The rhythmical cells and motives soon "evaporate" into a very tranquil postlude fading out delicately.

In spite of all these, this shadow plan was just a trigger for me and the piece shouldn’t be seen as programmatic music, having a plot or describing anything, but rather represents pure and abstract music, which can stand on its own merits and be listen to without all my private poetic connotations.

The musical substance of the concerto is derived from an aggregation of sounds built on an ascending row of intervals from the minor second to the minor sixth. The work is written in expressive chromatic language but a tonal center can be discerned (the tone C) which recurs throughout the entire work and serves as its anchor.

The work was commissioned by the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon-LeZion, which gave it its world premiere in 1992 under the baton of Noam Sheriff. It is dedicated to the orchestra's solo cellist Doron Toister and was awarded a grant by Tel-Aviv Foundation for Literature and Art.