Cornelis Dopper Cello Concerto

[JimL]

I have been trying to find the movement tempi for this work for ages.  I have already determined that the key is G minor, but I haven't been able to turn up anything on the divisions of the piece.  It's still on IMSLP's wishlist.  Anybody able to help?

[ken]

Cornelis Dopper - Cello Concerto (1910)

You can listen to it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9-18wBU9Z8

[Wheesht]

Perhaps the Stichting Cornelis Dopper can help - their biography in English states that all his works are preserved by the Nederlands Muziek Instituut (Dutch Musical Institute), Royal Library, The Hague:
http://www.nederlandsmuziekinstituut.nl

[eschiss1]

The link you're looking for, I think, is

Description of the Cornelis Dopper archive at the NMI - yes?

The NMI has lots (technical term.) of archives for various composers and organizations with descriptions/finding aids/etc. available at their main link. As to the concerto, contacting the Cornelis Dopper Society might help too. (Btw according to them it's 1910 rev. 1923.)
According to the NMI archives description, which lists the concerto ("B-flat and G major") score and reduction manuscripts under request nos. 044/152a-k, the concerto was dedicated to Gerard Hekking.

[Wheesht]

Yes, those were the links that I meant, thanks for clarifying this. I just came to them in a different way, first by checking the Dopper stichting/society and then following the link from them to the NMI. As a German native speaker I can more or less navigate Dutch sites if something is not available in German or English.

[eschiss1]

I don't speak Dutch at all, though it does have an English alternate section (which is my native language). Have had a longish look at it overall perhaps- apologies for my tone and curtness, though!!

[Wheesht]

No need to apologise! I'm happy to have found these different links thanks to you.

[JimL]

Well, the NMI archives description is wrong.  It's a common mistake made even by musicians to see a key signature and assume the major key, forgetting completely about the existence of the relative minor.  If you listen to the concerto on YT, its tonality is definitely centered on G, with the opening in the minor mode (relative minor of B-flat Major) and the ending in the major mode.  I'm about to email the Dopper Society and ask for the movement titles, for the benefit of the YT video.  If I obtain the information, it will be duly labeled.

[eschiss1]

Jim- agreed. that, and similar (also odder) things, happen on IMSLP all the time (e.g. someone describing Juon's D minor/modal-ish 3rd quartet as C major- because it lacks a key signature! It's -very- clearly in D - minor or so-called "modal" (since fixed).)

[JimL]

One of the more egregious examples of this was in the liner notes of one of the early Hyperion Romantic Piano Concerto Series issues - the one with the Rimsky-Korsakov and both Balakirev concertos.  The commentator, whose notes were otherwise excellent, made the mistake of saying the finale of Balakirev 2 was in the "distant key of G-flat Major". Helloooooo!!!  Try the parallel minor of the tonic E-flat.

[eschiss1]

Even if the announcer had been right (and rather odder things happen in Tchaikovsky's 1st piano concerto, come to think), G-flat is not -so- very distant from E-flat - certainly not at the turn of the 20th century (even allowing for conservative Russian audiences.) The - however poorly managed, or at best, abruptly transitioned from* - slow movement of Dvorak's posthumously-published 3rd (7-flat, that is, C# minor)? That's distant. (Distance being defined, as usual, by number of common chords - not distance on the circle of fifths. A and B major are quite close on the circle of fifths - and a fair amount further apart than are A major and C major-still fairly far apart, but easier to flow from one to the other via common chords, if the composer has a sense of, well, flow/fluency )

E

*transition - as when Haydn repeats a G to open the finale of a piano sonata, a G that (just) happens to "work" in both the slow movement (3 of E - changed to minor) and finale (3 of E-flat) main keys. Sometimes it doesn't take much, but with Dvorak 3 there's nothing at all...

[eschiss1]

I wonder if the performance by the Concertgebouw in 1931 (1931 November 1, Mengelberg/Carel van Leeuwen Boomkamp, cello/Concertgebouw) was preserved? (See Annals of the Concertgebouw, 1931.) (This was not the premiere, in any case- it was performed in November 1923- in what I presume was the revised version. There was a review of the concert on page 2 of the November 12 1923 issue of the Utrechts Nieuwsblad; see scanned in copy of the page.)

[Ilja]

The 1931 performance was not recorded, alas. At the time, there was still some debate about the use of recordings, and they only started in earnest in the mid-1930s.

Since the NMI is housed in the very building where I work, I will take a look at the score once I'm back in the Netherlands.

[eschiss1]

Thanks!

[Amphissa]

So, being quite slow these days, did Jim's question about the movement tempi ever get answered? Because the conversation seems to have wandered everywhere but there. haha