[3] According to musicologist David Grayson,[4] "Albert composed the Cello Concerto between June 1989 and January 1990 and completed the orchestration by March.
Andrew Clements of BBC Music Magazine praised the Cello Concerto as a "real novelty", remarking, "It is a beautifully wrought, coherent work, with some striking moments of dark introspection and a tragic cast that is truly impressive.
"[5] Gramophone called the work "a pretty riveting experience" and wrote:Fairly cosmopolitan in overall style (audible influences include Sibelius and Bernstein), it opens with an intense, rhapsodizing solo, before a blast of brass and a flurry of strings make way for a Mahlerian rising figure on the woodwind and a good deal of agitated argument.
Ideas throughout are darkly colourful but conventional, although Albert's score incorporates imaginative use of brass, harp (especially in its lower registers), piano and heavy percussion.
There's a scurrying scherzo, a pensive Larghetto (which opens with a Britten-style brass clarion call) and a ten-minute finale that occasionally suggests Bartok or the Stravinsky of the Symphony in Three Movements.