Leo Stern

Leo Stern (5 April 1862 – 10 September 1904) was an English cellist, best remembered for being the soloist in the premiere performance of Antonín Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B minor in London in 1896.

His father was a German violinist and conductor of the Brighton Symphony Society, and his mother an English pianist.

He worked in a business in Thornliebank near Glasgow from 1880 to 1883, but abandoned chemistry and entered the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied cello under Alessandro Pezze and then Carlo Alfredo Piatti.

[2][3] He appeared with Adelina Patti (in her 1888 tour), Émile Sauret and Ignaz Paderewski, and in Paris played with Jules Massenet, Benjamin Godard and Francis Thomé.

Although Dvořák's recently completed Cello Concerto in B minor was dedicated to Hanuš Wihan and Dvořák wanted nobody but Wihan to play it in public for the first time,[5] it was Leo Stern who was given the honour (there are conflicting versions of how this came about).