Cello Works

The works on this disc are not heard very often but is music that is certainly worthy of frequent hearing. This recording of the Second Cello Concerto follows upon an earlier recording of Saint Saens First with the same forces. The second concerto is more lyrical and less dramatic than the first and is cast in two movements. La Muse ET la poete is an interesting work with a dialogue between a violin (played by Joshua Bell) and a cello with orchestra. The romance is an interesting work with cello and horn as solo instruments. Perhaps the most dramatic work is the Cello Sonata, a brilliant work that is quite a showpiece for the cello. Steven Isserlis is wonderful in this recording and Christoph Eschenbach and the North German Radio Symphony ably support him. If you enjoy the music of Saint Saens it is worth exploring these lesser know works.

As discussed in an interview with Steven Isserlis and Jeremy Nicholas on an underrated composer, we find that Saint-Saens was indeed a brilliant composer, conductor, pianist, play write, poet and lecturer.

He gave his concert debut at the age of ten and when asked to give an encore Saint-Saens announced to the audience that he could play all of the Beethoven sonatas by memory and would be pleased to perform any one of their choosing! His compositional output was not prolific considering the long life he had, unlike Schubert. Perhaps it was due to the fact that Saint-Saens was an "experimenter." He also had no "real" style that could be pinpointed as a result, yet his compositions for the cello were extremely difficult and purely lyrical.

He was a brilliant pianist, performing his "Marche Militaire Francaise" composed in 1904 in concert in his eighties with a virtuosic technique, crystalline fast notes and admirable accuracy. In his orchestration of a cello suite for cello and piano, done at the end of his career, Op.16, he added an extra Tarantella movement showing off the silly side of his character. At his eighty-third birthday party many people attended to just make this misunderstood, great human being feel ignored and slighted. Artur Rubenstein met Saint-Saens, and described him as fat man that looked like a french bank official, nervous speech with a large hooked nose and spoke with a lisp.

Very much like Beethoven and Brahms, people either liked them or hated them. Yet underneath both men was a compassionate, loving individual. Saint-Saens loved Faure, and would do anything he could for him. In return Faure treated him like a son. Saint-Saens had a tragic life and a marriage that fell apart after his two very young son's died only six weeks apart. His uncontrolled grief was to cause him to blame the deaths on his wife causing her to leave Saint-Saens. Strangely enough, his grief was to show up in a Requiem Mass composed just eight days before the death of his first child.

The Cello Sonata No.2, is lesser known and difficult to grasp at first, unlike the first sonata, yet when finally inside the work it conveys its deeply felt pure lyricism, passion, intense depth of mood and seamless phrases, very much like the magnificent "Berceuse" in B flat, composed for violin and piano. (Look for performance by Pascal Devoyon and Philippe Graffin). This is a work that should be a staple of every cellist's repertoire.

The second Cello Concerto is a masterpiece and the performance given by Steven Isserlis and Christoph Eschenbach with the NDR Sinfonieorchester is stellar. The slow movement is conveyed like a gem to behold. It is deeply felt, monstrously difficult, purely lyrical and looks like a piano part. It offers a perfect balance of melodic lines that are lovingly cherished. The other striking aspect about this performance is the expansive range of colour, not only from the soloists but also from the Orchestra who play their hearts out.

"La Muse et le Poete" Op.132, adds a poetic dialogue to the cello played on the violin by the cherished and impressive Joshua Bell. Adding Eschenbach and the NDR Orchestra to the performance conveys the full vitality, inflections, the more agitated passages within the piece, and makes their finale a culmination of unanimity in their shared passages.

"Romance" Op.67, is a piece to be relished with passages that convey musical interplay between the cello and horn section. Its themes are beautifully resourceful and harmonically adventurous, which show an awareness of the musical establishment of the period.

As one would expect, the overall performances are all superior due to the exceptional calibre of the artists. The comprehensive approach and musical "purity" reveal a solidly established personality allied to good taste, forthright, powerful and formidable virtuosity.

Author: Raymond Vacchino M.Mus. Classical Music Critic

This album tells us something about Saint Saens' esteem of Bach, someone whose rediscovery by the French public took time. Both the second cello concerto and second sonata pay oblique homage to Bach's love of polyphony, baroque decoration, and exploration of technique to create the illusion of many voices from a bowed instrument. One cannot refrain from thinking of Bach's cello suites while listening to these works. British cellist Steven Isserlis is captured in detailed sound and in thrilling performances of both works with wild runs up and down his fingerboard, massive double stops, and slews of arpeggiated figures. The adagietto at about 4:30 into the concerto recalls the sarabandes of those suites and also, uncannily, Mahler in repose, as in the fifth symphony's adagietto or the beginning of the finale of the 10th symphony, in a moment of unsurpassed calm and acceptance. The sonata's second movement is an eight and a half minute "scherzo con variazioni" that reaches the heights scaled in the theme and variations genre by Brahms and Beethoven. It's as though Saint Saens is claiming he, too, belongs among that august assembly, and hearing this recording you might just agree. Isserlis, his superb pianist Pascal Devoyon, conductor Christoph Eschenbach with the NDR Symphony Orchestra (Hamburg), and the engineers have taken pains to make sure you hear all the passion and all the notes in these scores.

If you yearn for a stirring Cello Concerto with Berlioz-like orchestration, exuberant baroque textures, and romantic melodic grace, look no further. It puzzles me that classical FM radio would play the Elgar, Dvorak, Schumann or Saint Saens first concerto two hundred times (pick a number) for every airing of this equally worthy opus. I have not heard other versions, such as the celebrated Philips Walevska/Inbal recording on Pentatone dating back about 30 years, but the American Record Guide's quite reliable cello critic David Moore thinks Isserlis is the best overall. A final bonus is La Muse et le Poete, op.132, a glorious 15 minute violin/cello double concerto, where Isserlis is joined by Joshua Bell. Here the cake is the sinfully delicious confection we expect from Saint Saens at the top of his game. All readings are cogent and vigorous with tight ensemble.