# Antonín Dvořák: Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104 Like many in his day, Dvořák didn't believe the cello could carry a concerto. It had an important role in chamber music and in orchestras, but that role was to support; its high range was supposedly too weak to sing above a full orchestra. But despite having criticized the instrument as "nasal" and "mumbling," in 1894 he heard a concert that changed his mind: Herbert's Second Cello Concerto, performed by the New York Philharmonic. It was a revelation. He left the concert hall that night inspired to write his own. The score was finished by February 1895, but something intervened before the premiere. While composing the slow movement, news reached Dvořák that his sister-in-law Josefina was gravely ill. Thirty years earlier he had loved her; she hadn't returned it, and he'd married her younger sister instead. Into the Adagio he placed "Leave Me Alone," a song of his she had cherished. After Josefina died in May, Dvořák reopened the score and added sixty new bars to the finale, an elegy for her. Brahms, when he saw the finished work, said he would have written one himself, had he known it was possible. It has since become, indisputably, the most popular and most performed cello concerto.