Klaus Döring's Classical Music/Klaus Döring's Klassische Musik

By G eorg Predota , Interlude  In its simplest form, a concerto is defined as a musical composition in which one or more solo instruments interact with an orchestra or ensemble. The term concerto is ambiguous because it originated from splicing together two Latin words. “Consere” means to join, or to weave, and “certamen” means competition or to fight. As you can tell, it’s not simply the case that a virtuoso soloist plays extended featured passages and is dutifully accompanied by an orchestra. In reality, it’s more like a marriage or partnership in that the two parts in a concerto, the soloist and the orchestra, alternate episodes of opposition, cooperation, and independence in the creation of the music flow. The vast majority of all concertos seem to have been written to feature the piano, the violin, and possibly the cello as solo instruments. But that’s not always the case, as composers have explored the timbres, techniques, and virtuoso possibilities of many other instruments ...