The cello concerto is one of Lutosławski's most celebrated works. The music critic Andrew Clements of The Guardian called it "one of the Polish composer's greatest achievements".[3] The writer Michael McManus similarly wrote, "I have always had a special affection for Witold Lutosławski's Cello Concerto. Like so many of his works, it is tautly composed, relatively short and full of contrasts. Intriguingly, it also strikes me as sitting to some degree outside the mainstream of his otherwise clear compositional phases, emanating from his most avant-garde period but somehow not fully belonging to it."[4]