The instrumentalist I listened to was Zuill Bailey, unfortunately I wasn’t able to find out whether his cadenza was improvised or had been written down beforehand. Compared to other cadenzas I’ve listened to so far, this one is, with a duration of around 1 min. 10 sec. , the longest. It can be found eight bars before the end of the first movement.
Bailey starts on a deep pitch with the main theme of the piece. As he progresses throughout the first part of the cadenza, still working with the theme, he works his way up, always becoming a bit louder. Throughout this section, he occasionally puts in chords. Bailey continues to a motif were he plays a soft melody on a higher pitch, which gets “interrupted” by a few strong deep notes. This motif becomes faster and brings more hectic to the cadenza, until bailey closes the theme by playing two long deep pitched notes. From there on he works his way up again, playing short thrills on every note he stays on. After a long thrill the orchestra continues playing.
I found it interesting that, even though this cadenza was unusually long (or at least long compared to others I looked at so far) it didn’t become boring. Bailey used the motifs from the concerto in such an interesting and varied way, that he created several different moods, which lead the cadenza to be entertaining.
Dianas Learning Log 