Arthur Foote: The Complete Cello Works

Arthur Foote: The Complete Cello Works 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