Brinton Smith, Author at CelloBello

About Brinton Smith

Hailed by Newsday for “extraordinary musicianship…forceful, sophisticated and entirely in the spirit of the music,” cellist Brinton Smith continues to win rave reviews for virtuosic performances with musical ideals rooted in the golden age of string playing. His debut recording of Miklós Rózsa’s Cello Concerto with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra won widespread international critical acclaim, with Gramophone praising Smith as a “hugely eloquent, impassioned soloist,” and his recording of chamber music of Fauré with Gil Shaham was chosen by numerous critics as one of the year’s best albums. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham, Cho-Liang Lin, Lynn Harrell, Sarah Chang, Dawn Upshaw and members of the Beaux Arts Trio and the Guarneri, Emerson, Juilliard, Cleveland, and Berg quartets. Mr. Smith is the principal cellist of the Houston Symphony and a faculty member of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. He was previously a member of the New York Philharmonic and the principal cellist of the San Diego and Fort Worth symphonies. His performances have been broadcast throughout the world including, in the US, on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR’s Performance Today and Symphonycast. At age 10, Mr. Smith was admitted part-time to Arizona State University, studying mathematics, music and German, and he completed a B.A. in mathematics at age 17. He received his masters and doctoral degrees from Juilliard, studying with renown cellist Zara Nelsova and writing on the playing of Emanuel Feuermann.

The Origins of Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 2 in D Major (Part 2 of 2)

My research into this topic was inspired by upcoming concerts this weekend with the Houston Symphony. The Saturday January 30th performance is viewable on livestream at 8pm Central time. I am heavily indebted to Thomas Tolley and Dr. George Kenneway, whose groundbreaking research I only survey in this article. Their papers should be read in their entirety for the rich level of background and detail they provide. Unlike most of Haydn’s symphonic commissions, the cello concerto would stay unpublished for two decades. The market for cello concerti was more limited than for piano and violin concerti and was focused on works playable by advanced amateur musicians. Although there was a general increase in the difficulty of published cello writing in the late 18th century, only the concerti of Boccherini rivaled [...]

By Brinton Smith|2024-07-08T12:42:30-04:00January 27th, 2021|Categories: Historical, Repertoire|Tags: Cello Concerto No. 2 in D Major, Origin of Haydn's Cello Concerto, Houston Symphony, brinton smith, Anton Kraft, James Cervetto, Franz Joseph Haydn|

The Origins of Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 2 in D Major (Part 1 of 2)

My research into this topic was inspired by upcoming concerts this weekend with the Houston Symphony. The Saturday January 30th performance is viewable on livestream at 8pm Central time. I am heavily indebted to Thomas Tolley and Dr. George Kenneway, whose groundbreaking research I only survey in this article. Their papers should be read in their entirety for the rich level of background and detail they provide. Haydn’s 1783 D major cello concerto (Hob VIIb:2) suffered a checkered reception for much of its early history, with aspersions cast both upon its authenticity and its compositional quality. Even when it finally gained popularity among cellists in the late 19th century, it did so in performing editions that significantly altered both its style and substance. The reception of the concerto was further [...]

By Brinton Smith|2024-07-08T12:42:48-04:00January 26th, 2021|Categories: Historical, Repertoire|Tags: James Cervetto, Franz Joseph Haydn, Cello Concerto No. 2 in D Major, Origin of Haydn's Cello Concerto, Houston Symphony, brinton smith, Anton Kraft|

Exiles in Paradise: on the “Hollywood Renaissance” and Finding New Repertoire for the Cello: Part 2

This article is the second installment in a two-part series As we discussed in part 1, war and persecution in Europe created an unprecedented gathering of émigré musical talent in Los Angeles in the mid-20th century, including Jascha Heifetz, William Primrose, Artur Rubinstein, Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, and Lotte Lehmann. Of particular interest to cellists, Los Angeles in this era was also home to top cellists including Gregor Piatigorsky, Emanuel Feuermann (for the last several summers of his life), Kurt Reher, Eleanor Aller (Slatkin), Gabor Rejto, Edgar Lustgarten and Ray Kramer, to name just a few, and the hometown of future stars such as Paul Katz, Laurence Lesser and Nathaniel Rosen. But perhaps most remarkably, Los Angeles was the home of arguably the greatest collection of composers to [...]

By Brinton Smith|2024-07-24T19:28:45-04:00March 24th, 2020|Categories: Historical, Repertoire|Tags: korngold, Piatagorsky, Rosza|

Exiles in Paradise: on the “Hollywood Renaissance” and Finding New Repertoire for the Cello: Part 1

This article is the first installment in a two-part series As cellists, we tend to think of much of the repertoire that we play as European cultural traditions that we have assimilated. We generally associate American musical tradition with Copland, Ives, Gershwin and perhaps a few brief years in the life of Antonin Dvorak. Many musicians are unaware, however, that in the first half of the 20th century, an influx of European refugees, fleeing war and persecution, rapidly formed, within a few square miles near Hollywood, one of the most talented and prolific communities in music history. As they attempted to rebuild their lives in this exotic paradise, they indelibly altered the course of American culture. Performers living in Los Angeles during this era included Jascha Heifetz, William Primrose, [...]

By Brinton Smith|2024-07-24T19:31:57-04:00March 15th, 2020|Categories: Historical, Repertoire|Tags: Los Angeles, cello, Jascha Heifetz, igor stravinsky, arnold schoenberg, Sergei Rachmaninoff', Leopold Godowsky, brinton smith|

Not Enough

The long drive from Aspen gave me a chance to refine a bit what I said to my students there to end our last class: I have been almost as lucky as you can be in this business. I've had countless disappointments of course- some deserved, some not. That is the nature of the business. But I have a good job, a happy reputation, a balance between solo, chamber, orchestral playing and teaching, the good fortune to be friends and colleagues with some of the musicians I admire most in the world, and the respect of some of the peers that I care the most about. I've had the chance to travel, play concerts, enjoy the camaraderie and live some of the enviable life. I haven't had everything, but I've [...]

By Brinton Smith|2024-07-24T19:43:55-04:00September 4th, 2019|Categories: Artistic Vision|Tags: finding meaning, purpose, unattainable, love, brinton smith, not enough, back to school|

Castelnuovo-Tedesco Cello Concerto Revival

June 8, 2018 marked the Naxos release of a live recording of the first professional performance of Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's 'lost' cello concerto in over 80 years. Castelnuovo-Tedesco's career in his native Italy was cut short by Mussolini's rise, and he spent the latter half of his life in Hollywood, where he scored nearly 200 films, while continuing to compose classical works and teaching students including Henry Mancini, Nelson Riddle, André Previn, Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams (André Previn tells the story of Mario forcing him to orchestrate Mozart's 40th symphony from memory, and then comparing his orchestration to the economy of Mozart's). Gregor Piatigorsky and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, August 1935 (source unknown) Mario relates that Piatigorsky asked “Castelnuovo, a great many cellists play your works as well [...]

By Brinton Smith|2024-08-05T12:57:01-04:00June 13th, 2018|Categories: Repertoire|Tags: premiere, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, cello concerto, korngold, Naxos, New York Philharmonic, Piatigorsky|

Emanuel Feuermann and the Art of Phrasing

There has been a long-running debate in the string-playing world regarding the 'Golden Age' of string playing, generally considered to span the 1920s to the 1960s. While many today are happy to listen to and model their playing on more contemporary players, there has been a persistent argument made that the players of that era—Heifetz, Feuermann, Kreisler, Oistrach, Casals, and numerous others—played in a different way than more recent players. It is easy to dismiss this argument as the eternal 'nothing is as good as it used to be' meme and, when painted with too broad a brush, such generalizations quickly fall apart. The string players of that era were, after all, a group of vividly different players with different approaches—as are today's players. Yet when one begins to examine [...]

By Brinton Smith|2024-08-05T13:00:01-04:00May 18th, 2018|Categories: Artists|Tags: practicing, Technique, Habits, legato, Feuermann, Casals, bow, vibrato, phrasing|

LA Story: A Recital of New & Unusual Works for Cello & Piano from Hollywood’s Golden Age

Like many string players I grew up loving the Heifetz recording of the Korngold Violin Concerto, and a general obsession with Heifetz led to an interest in the composers he championed, in particular composers like Korngold, Rózsa, Castelnuovo-Tedesco and others who lived in Los Angeles during the mid-20th century. This inspired a project last April to revive the Castelnuovo-Tedesco cello concerto for its first performance since its 1930s debut performances with Piatigorsky and Toscanini. The recording of our 'reboot' will be released this June on Naxos, but reading and studying about Castelnuovo-Tedesco's relationships with the film studios, Heifetz, Piatigorsky, and the other musicians and composers living in LA gave me a new appreciation for the incredible depth of musical talent that existed in Los Angeles in the middle of the [...]

By Brinton Smith|2024-08-07T18:52:32-04:00January 4th, 2018|Categories: Repertoire|Tags: Ernst Toch, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Miklós Rózsa, korngold, Franz Waxman, Sergei Rachmaninoff', Leopold Godowsky, Heifetz, brinton smith, Piatigorsky, igor stravinsky, arnold schoenberg|

Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Forgotten Masterpiece

With over 200 film scores to his name, it's more likely that you've heard Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's music than his name. Castelnuovo-Tedesco was born in Florence in 1895 into a family that had been in Italy for generations, since the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. His career as a composer began with conservatory study in Italy, and by the 1920s he was beginning to garner attention in greater Europe. In 1932 Mario began a lifelong friendship with the guitarist Andres Segovia, who inspired perhaps his most famous work, the Guitar Concerto No.1, and became an important champion of his music. It is largely due to Segovia's influence that Mario wrote over 100 works for the guitar, which today form an important and frequently heard part of that instrument's repertoire. [...]

By Brinton Smith|2024-08-08T15:25:32-04:00April 12th, 2017|Categories: Repertoire|Tags: Gregor Piatigorsky, premiere, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, cello concerto, Houston Symphony Orchestra|