Lev Konstantinovich Knipper's concerto for bassoon and string orchestra: introduction and critical performing edition

Recent studies of bassoon music in twentieth-century Russia have unearthed a rich trove of previously little-known repertoire. Despite the abundance of original Russian bassoon music, little of it approaches the sophistication of the bassoon writing within the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian symphonic tradition. One work which does come close to equaling those aesthetic standards is Lev Knipper’s Concerto for Bassoon and String Orchestra (1970), which confronts the bassoonist with far greater expressive and technical demands than previous Russian solo bassoon works. In order to facilitate this concerto’s incorporation into the standard bassoon repertoire, the present study has produced the first-available critical edition of the score, piano reduction and solo bassoon part to this concerto. The edition is framed by a concise biography of the composer, including an overview of his various compositional style periods, historical background on the concerto itself and an assessment of its musical contents.