The work was written at the request of the English cellist Beatrice Harrison, who was the soloist at the British premiere in July 1923.
Although it was written for Harrison, Delius's publishers arranged a prestigious world premiere in Vienna, by the Russian cellist Alexandre Barjansky, with Ferdinand Löwe conducting.
[1] Harrison gave the British premiere on 23 July 1923, in a concert at which she also played the Elgar concerto with the composer conducting.
[1][4] After the British premiere The Observer described the concerto as "beautiful but backboneless … It is from beginning to end nothing but a sort of long one-movement rhapsody".
It abounds in momentary lovelinesses, but long before the end the absence of any sort of climax … induces a sense of monotony".