Cello Score

Sol Gabetta’s first recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto, with the Danish National Symphony, was much admired when it appeared six years ago. This one, taken from a concert in the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus in 2014, is a far glossier affair orchestrally. Simon Rattle’s tendency to overmould the phrasing is sometimes too obvious, but Gabetta’s playing is intense and searching, less introspective than some performances in the Adagio, perhaps, but epic in scale in the outer movements, and always keenly responsive. Those who possess her earlier disc might not think they need to invest in this one, but would then miss Gabetta’s vivid, pulsating account of the Martinů concerto, which went through a quarter of a century of revisions before the definitive 1955 version she plays here, with Krysztof Urbański conducting. She finds real depth and intensity in it, both in the slow movement and in the introspective episode that interrupts the finale’s headlong rush.

Nobody knows why Johann Sebastian Bach composed his six suites for solo cello. Nor does anybody know how it came about that the suites were soon afterwards consigned to oblivion and more than a century before a 13-year-old Spanish musical prodigy discovered a worn copy of the score in a second-hand bookstore store in Barcelona. For the next 11 years Pablo Casals practiced them every day. Finally, in 1936, he entered London’s Abbey Road studios to record the second and third suites for the first time. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, Bach’s cello suites have become a rite of passage for all aspiring cellists.

Oh, not another Dvořák Cello Concerto recording, you would be justified in asking. Well, yes and no. This is indeed a special one, but not only for the superb performance the German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser gives with the Prague Philharmonia under Jakub Hrůša of this most popular of all cello concertos. What makes this disc practically indispensable is its inclusion of the less frequently heard Lalo concerto in the best account I have heard since Pierre Fournier recorded it many years ago with Jean Martinon and the Lamoureux Orchestra for DG.

This disc, very well recorded and issued originally in 1983, brings together all of the works for solo cello written by Tchaikovsky and as Tchaikovsky originally intended. They are all played with assurance and sensitivity by Wallfisch. Undoubtedly the most important work here is the Rococo Variations. This has suffered for most of its existence from the interference from its dedicatee, Wilhelm Fitzenhagen who made numerous alterations to the score including the deletion of the 8th variation and re-ordering the rest. He also added repeat marks and changed various dynamics.

In his day, Friedrich Dotzauer (1783-1860) was extremely influential as a performer, teacher and composer. In addition to having a highly successful career as an orchestral player. Dotzauer taught many of the best-known cellists of his age, and was prolific as a composer of sacred music, symphonies and chamber music. This issue makes available a sample of Dotzauer's chamber music which reveals the composer's craftsmanship and rich imagination. The four-movement Quintet. Op. 134 has an easy grace and carefree melodiousness that Bylsma and his colleagues express most engagingly.

Combining works by Debussy and Poulenc on an album may, to some, seem a bit ironic seeing as at one point, the latter railed against the music of the former. Poulenc was later to change his tune, though, and eventually became one of Debussy's most ardent admirers. The two were greatly responsible for a new direction in French music, which, ironically, required both of them to look to composers of the past for inspiration.

Though Tchaikovsky had an obvious penchant for writing astounding melodies for the cello (the soaring 5/4 waltz from the Sixth Symphony, or the brooding opening of the A minor Piano Trio for example), he wrote surprisingly little repertoire for the instrument on its own. No concerto exists; the closest cellists have is the popular and charming Variations on a Rococo Theme. Four other short works – two of which are transcriptions by the composer himself – make up the remainder of Tchaikovsky's cello works.