Steinway & Sons releases a new album from cellist Zuill Bailey: a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Wimbledon International Music Festival, where Bailey has often appeared. The album includes performances of the Schumann Cello Concerto, performed with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Robin O’Neill; and the Brahms Double Concerto with violinist Philippe Quint, recorded live with the North Carolina Symphony under Grant Llewellyn, as well as shorter works by Ernest Bloch and Max Bruch.

The idea for this album was born out of Zuill Bailey’s long-standing connection to the Wimbledon International Music Festival, where he performed, with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the programme that would later be featured on his 2018 Steinway album, Haydn Cello Concertos. Of the many facets of this recording, the through line of all of the works is the voice of the cello and its great capacity to be intimate, expressive and heartbreaking.

Schumann’s Cello Concerto, written in 1850, was catapulted to its current place in the canon of great nineteenth-century cello works by renowned cellist Pablo Casals, and since then it has been a staple of the concerto repertoire. While Brahms never wrote a cello concerto, he did write a Double Concerto with virtuosic parts for both cello and violin, which converse in musically daring ways.

An arrangement by Philharmonia Orchestra conductor Robin O’Neill of Prayer, the first movement of Ernest Bloch’s triptych entitled From Jewish Life, follows the Brahms Concerto. This piece maintains the distinct emotional heights created by the rest of the programme, providing listeners with an intensely-felt impressionistic sound that creates an introspective and melancholic mood.

Rounding out the recording is Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, a gorgeous and imploring adagio for cello and orchestra. The work is based on two Jewish sources, the Kol Nidrei (meaning “all vows”), an Aramaic declaration recited in the synagogue on the eve of Yom Kippur, and a musical setting of one of Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, “Oh, weep for those that wept by Babel’s stream.” In Bruch’s arrangement, the cellist effectively becomes the cantor, singing out these lines on the instrument.

Zuill Bailey, widely considered one of the premiere cellists in the world, is a Grammy Award winner, distinguished soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, Artistic Director and teacher.  His rare combination of celebrated artistry, technical wizardry and engaging personality has secured his place as one of the most sought after and active cellists today.

Recent highlights include appearances with orchestras such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Minnesota, Israel, San Francisco, Toronto, Nashville, North Carolina, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and the Philharmonia (UK) with conductors Itzhak Perlman, Carlos Kalmar, Neeme Järvi, Jun Märkl, Stanislav Skrowaczewski, Alan Gilbert, Andrey Boreyko, Krzysztof Urbanski, Giancarlo Guerrero, Andrew Litton, Grant Llewellyn and James DePriest.  He was honoured as the distinguished Alumnus of 2014 by Johns Hopkins University Peabody Institute.

Zuill Bailey is an internationally renowned recording artist with over twenty titles. Mr. Bailey’s extensive discography includes the Bach Cello Suites and Britten Cello Symphony/Cello Sonata CDs, both of which immediately soared to the number one spot on the Classical Billboard Charts.

Mr. Bailey performs on the “rosette” 1693 Matteo Gofriller Cello, formerly owned by Mischa Schneider of the Budapest String Quartet. He is the Artistic Director of El Paso Pro-Musica (Texas), the Sitka Summer Music Festival/Series and Cello Seminar (Alaska), the Northwest Bach Festival (Washington), the “Classical Inside and Out” at the Mesa Arts Center (Arizona) and Director of the Center for Arts Entrepreneurship and Professor of Cello at the University of Texas at El Paso.

“Bailey’s pacing and shaping of the music is extraordinary, allowing you to hear the structure of the music as well as its emotional effect...this is clearly one of Bailey’s finest albums to date.” - Art Music Lounge

“Cello soloist Bailey drew the best out of this work, creating ethereal poignancy, purifying rapture, and sustaining compelling intrigue.” - The Boston Musical Intelligencer