The Strad, 23 April 2024: 'Uncovering Arthur Foote's Cello Concerto: Julian Schwarz' (https://www.thestrad.com/playing-hub/uncovering-arthur-footes-cello-concerto-julian-schwarz/17882.article). The article includes a link to excerpts on Youtube. The recording is to be released on Delos.
The Douglas Moore, Rochester performance from 1985, referenced in The Strad article, was available on the Unsung Downloads Section at one point: https://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,1523.msg22041.html#msg22041
Here's the Youtube link (https://youtu.be/Wogaw5WNG3M?si=4YGAUtF9Ssa5IIg3) to that recording.
Besides the Delos recording wasn't there also one on Naxos?
No, there has never been a commercial recording.
Reading about the cellist's struggles to get anyone interested in collaborating on a performance was telling. It's the same old story: if it's not a name-brand composer...
Fuhgeddaboudit!
Just released today
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/arthur-foote-the-complete-cello-works/hnum/12809239
Excellent news.
The samples don't sound promising. The cello tone has a forced, labored quality, while the balance between cello and accompaniment is weighted too heavily in favor of the cello.
Nevertheless, this is the only game in town for the concerto so I have already placed it on order. I only hope it doesn't turn out to be like the Tudor recording of the Raff cello concertos, which I listened to twice and have since left unplayed on the shelves for years, hoping for a better recording to come along.
With any luck, it was just the low quality of the samples. Fingers crossed!
I was disheartened to hear that, John. I have long had an LP of some of Foote's impressive orchestral music in my collection, but perhaps I had better wait until the new recording appears on YouTube before ordering., or at least wait until your critique on the CD itself makes its mark.
The full album can be sampled on YouTube here (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_m5JtQ_Du2yYW1cYEa18vwaY3heozej5v0&playnext=1&index=1), Terry,
Thanks,Mark. I'm starting to listen to it now
Quote from: terry martyn on Saturday 29 August 2026, 17:42I have long had an LP of some of Foote's impressive orchestral music in my collection [...]
I have never placed much value in his orchestral music. Like Fuchs, I think his real genius lies in his many fine chamber works.
I'd make at least one exception with Fuchs- the overture Das Meere... is terrific- and perhaps the same is true of Foote as well.
I sat down in row 15 and watched as the pianist took the stage. Where was the cellist? Just then the man in row 13 stood up, turned around, and reached below the empty seat in row 14 directly ahead of me, from which he lifted a cello which had been hidden on the floor. Propping the instrument on the empty seat ahead of me and leaning in from his spot in row 13, he signaled the pianist and the concert began...
***
I noticed this thread had gone quiet, so here's a question: did anyone hate this recording as much as I did? We get off to a rough start with the exaggerated detache bowing and odd phrasing in the opening of the first of the Three Pieces, Op. 1. This corrects itself after a bit, but throughout Julian Schwarz's curious choices of accelerando and tempo changes are mannered and forced. Far worse, however, is Bernd Gottinger's engineering, which places the cello in your lap and the piano and the orchestra at a weak distance. The cello is presented point-bank, with exaggerated dynamics and in-the-F-holes sound. The cello at fortissimo is as loud as the entire orchestra's fortissimos and louder than the piano's. Played softly, the cello sounds more naturally blended, but its close miking destroys this as soon as we hit mezzo-forte. Piano and orchestra are often drowned out, reduced to background filler. When Foote tosses the lead to the piano and has the cello play decorative figuration or just droning double-stops, it is that figuration, those double-stops, that we hear, the melodic lead utterly submerged.
With the exception of the Cello Concerto, we've heard this before in better sound. The cello-and-piano music can be heard in Douglas Moore's wonderful MHS LP (which I pray will someday see the light of day again) from the early 80s. More recently (if 1988 qualifies as "more recently") there is Jules and Virginia Eskin's CD of the Op. 1 cello pieces for Northeastern records, though even here the balances are not ideal. But the Cello Sonata can be heard to even better effect in Andres Diaz and Samuel Sanders's 1997 CD for Dorian.
In one aspect this new recording beats the others, and that is in the gorgeous tone that Marika Bournaki produces from her Hamburg Steinway Model B (not the ubiquitous model D for a change). Just listen to the bright overtones that she draws from it at the 2:07 mark of the first movement of the Cello Sonata, when the piano introduces the second theme unaccompanied and the cello mercifully shuts up for a few bars. The beauty and warmth of the sound brought tears to my eyes. It's a momentary haven of peace, an example of what this recording could have been, before the cello returns and crushes everything under its heel, thanks to Mr. Gottinger.
If this new recording has any value, it is allowing us to hear the Cello Concerto without enduring the archival sound of Douglas Moore's 1983 performance on YouTube, which is hampered by sound for all the world like a 1933 aircheck. It's not a bad concerto by any means, though it does suffer when heard side-by-side with the Cello Sonata. Perhaps it's natural that the more mature Cello Sonata should benefit from Foote's experience as a composer, in the same way that the 2nd Piano Trio is a more sophisticated work than the 1st, but we still can expect more. The Piano Quartet, Op. 23, for example, is a more inventive and accomplished work than the Cello Concerto even though the Quartet was composed earlier.
This disc is a missed opportunity, but which I hope will at least generate more interest in the music itself.
I haven't heard the Douglas Moore performance of the Cello Concerto for more than ten years, but I noted it down at the time as having left a positive impression of a fine concerto (I wasn't bothered by the age of the performance) . I have said elsewhere that I am not in the least interested in chamber music - it's the performance of the concerto that matters therefore. Having collected all the nineteenth century cello concertos that matter,and a host of ones that don't (eg Romberg), my desire to purchase remains strong.
This had somehow eluded me, but having listened to it over the past two hours I am entirely with John. At times, the concerto sounds as a cello solo sonata recorded in a place where next door's stereo seeps through - it's that bad. I don't think I've ever listened to a recording where someone messed the recording balance up this bad. It used to happen with some piano concerto recordings in the 1980s and '90s, and of course with about every Jessye Norman recording (I think she had it stipulated in her contract) but rarely with cello concertos. As for the works, the cello concerto isn't bad per se, but not even close to the inspiration level of the sonata. That one deserves more attention, in a more well-balanced recording with perhaps also a soloist who displays a bit more sensitivity to the necessary excess of this repertory. Don't get me wrong, Schwarz is an excellent cellist but he plays everything very "straight".
The recent Musicweb review was favourable, but,from the sound of things,this CD is nowhere near the level of the old LP.
It's also pretty pricy. Maybe it's time to sit on my hands.