Arthur Foote: The Complete Cello Works

This release gathers Arthur Foote’s complete music for cello, culminating in the world-premiere commercial recording of his Cello Concerto in G minor, Op. 33 — some 130 years after its 1894 premiere. Foote, the only member of Boston’s “Second New England School” trained entirely in the United States (and Harvard’s first music-degree recipient), wrote the concerto the same pivotal year as Dvořák’s own Cello Concerto in B minor and Victor Herbert’s in E minor; Julian Schwarz’s liner notes point out the shared four-note motive between Foote’s and Dvořák’s works, raising real questions about who influenced whom.

The programme also includes the deeply personal 3 Pieces, Op. 1 (with Schumann-esque piano writing reflecting Foote’s own career as an organist), the French-flavored Aubade, Op. 77 (written for cellist Alwin Schroeder), the folk-inflected Scherzo, Op. 22, and the expansive Cello Sonata in E minor, Op. 78 — the most substantial and previously best-known of his cello-piano works. Cellist Julian Schwarz, drawing on performing editions by Douglas Moore and his own new edition of the concerto from a 19th-century facsimile score, brought the Boston-Area Premiere of the concerto back to Foote’s home city in 2026, 132 years after it was first heard in Chicago.

Julian Schwarz – cello
Marika Bournaki – piano
Gerard Schwarz – conductor
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra