Cello Concerto in B minor, op. 104, B. 191

Dvořák wrote his Cello Concerto for his friend, the cellist Hanuš Wihan. The dedication places the work within a personal relationship as well as within the concert repertoire: behind its symphonic scale stands the voice of an instrument and a performer whom the composer knew intimately.

He wrote it during his last year at the National Conservatory in New York, after the success of the second cello concerto by his colleague there, Victor Herbert; an earlier attempt of 1865, in A major, had been left unorchestrated. The score was finished on 9 February 1895. In the middle of the slow movement he quoted his own song Leave Me Alone, prompted by the illness and death of his sister-in-law, whom he had loved as a young man; the theme returns in the finale, in a farewell duet for cello and solo violin. Wihan did not give the first performance: it was played in London on 19 March 1896 by Leo Stern.