Weber - Grand Potpourri, Op. 20 (Urtext Edition)

Carl Maria von Weber wrote his Grand Potpourri, Op. 20, while serving as artistic director at the Hofkapelle Stuttgart. This tuneful and brilliant work stands as one of Weber’s important contributions to the cello repertoire. The title page of the autograph reads: “Grand Potpourri pour le Violoncelle composé et dédié à son ami Graff Professeur de Violoncelle au service de S.M. le roi de Würtemberg par Charles Marie B. de Weber Op. 20 1808 in Stuttgard komponirt.”

YL Edition presents an urtext edition based on Weber’s autograph manuscript, signed on December 31, 1808, and preserved in the Bodmer collection in Switzerland. We would like to thank the Bodmer collection for making the autograph available to us. This edition includes a clean cello part, a cello part with fingerings and bowings, and a new piano reduction.

The Grand Potpourri is in D major and consists of four movements performed without pause. The first movement is a majestic introduction, followed by an Andante with variations, the same movement recorded by Emanuel Feuermann with piano in an arrangement by Friedrich Grützmacher. The transition into the third movement provides a place for an improvised cadenza. The third movement is a searching Adagio with a Fandango middle section, acrobatic for the soloist but always idiomatic. The rondo theme comes from Franz Danzi’s opera Der Quasi-Mann, specifically Therese’s rondo “The Guardian Spirit, the Lover.”

Tuneful, virtuosic, and substantial, the Grand Potpourri would make an excellent first concerto by a major composer for a student ready for repertoire on the level of Haydn’s C-major Concerto or Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No. 1. It is well suited for lessons, recitals, auditions, and concerto performances by advancing cellists.

ASTA level: 4–5