Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1994)

...the work of a brilliant composer, who is unafraid to let his emotions show and who possesses the skill to bring off grand orchestral effects.

Richard Danielpour is one of the best of a new breed of American composers… [The] CELLO CONCERTO, one of his finest works, [was] commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, in which Ma was soloist at the premiere. It is an agreeable concerto. Although divided into several movements played without pause, Ma seemingly gave it one long breath, so seamless were his phrases and so sustained his line. The concerto calls for diverse colors, and Ma provided them. There [is] a keen sense of drama. Melancholy and brooding alternate with tension and lyricism.

Danielpour's CELLO CONCERTO shows the composer in his most compelling voice. Danielpour mixes the wails of a Jewish cantor, Messiaen's chirping, metal-hitting-metal percussion effects, and the high-energy swagger of Bernstein's Broadway music (a native New Yorker, Danielpour seems to be saying, 'Cliches be damned, this is what the City sounds like'). It's a finely crafted work, [with] lovely sonorities, rhythmically catchy and tonally attractive on a moment-by-moment basis. It was exhilarating to hear [Ma], a top soloist, pressed to the limits of his considerable abilities.

...perhaps not since Aram Khachaturian has such exotically colored music come along. It all comes to a great rackety end, and had the audience on its feet cheering.

His newest work...should speak eloquently to a music-loving generation that has grown suspicious of academic formulas, a generation that expects spiritual engagement as well as craft from its musical fare....In four uninterrupted movements...the concerto proposes a journey of the soul.

Danielpour, long considered this country's best younger composers, has produced the finest new concerto this listener has heard in years.

The Cello Concerto is a welcome jaunt into contemporary, modern music. The very prolific and in-demand Danielpour, honored by an exclusive contract with Sony, has produced an operatic concerto. In this concerto around the theme of death, the composer is unafraid of repetition, but not monotonously so. Danielpour here sees the cello as a tragic instrument of belief, [with] a savage depth of emotion.