Concertino for Cello and Orchestra, op. 132

Serge Prokofieff

Sadly, Prokofieff's Concertino for Cello and Orchestra, op. 132, was left unfinished at the time of the composer's death, although the majority of it was completed, albeit only in short score. It appears that only the slow movement was composed from beginning to end; the first movement reached the point where the recapitulation would commence, and of the third movement only a torso amounting to the opening third was written. From the extant material a performing version was prepared by Mstislav Rostropovich, for whom Prokofieff had composed the aforementioned Sinfonia Concertante for Cello and Orchestra, op. 125, and Rostropovich performed his completion with piano accompaniment at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1956. At Rostropovich's instigation Dmitri Kabalevsky scored the completed Concertino for full orchestra, and this was premiered by Rostropovich in 1960 at the Moscow...