Concertos

[robinturner]

Listening to some late eighteenth century cello concerto that I don't recognise, it occurred to me that I really like concertos for bass instruments. A solo violin takes on the orchestra and cows them into submission with it's superior notes-per-second firepower; a piano rules the orchestra majestically; a flute engages in polite conversation. But a cello or, even more, a bassoon, struggles just to stay even. The poor thing spends most of its life playing dull bass lines, then come its moment of glory, it finds itself locked in a death-struggle with superior numbers and higher pitches, fighting desperately, not to win, but merely to transform bathos into tragedy.

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