Cellists often complain about the depth of their available concerto repertory, but it may be that they're not looking quite hard enough. Consider this release from cellist Daniel Müller-Schott and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, containing concerted works by four French composers, not a one, possibly excepting the Cello Concerto in D minor of Lalo, terribly commonly played. As the title suggests, the music shows how many different takes there are on the idea of French music, often thought to rely on the virtues of ...
Read More
Cellists often complain about the depth of their available concerto repertory, but it may be that they're not looking quite hard enough. Consider this release from cellist Daniel Müller-Schott and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, containing concerted works by four French composers, not a one, possibly excepting the Cello Concerto in D minor of Lalo, terribly commonly played. As the title suggests, the music shows how many different takes there are on the idea of French music, often thought to rely on the virtues of charm, color, melody, and brilliant orchestration. These works possess those qualities, but each has an entirely different effect. Müller-Schott is especially effective in the delicate, just slightly jazz-like Cello Concerto in C major of Arthur Honegger, from 1929. The Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33, is a rousing work that inflects the traditional three-movement concerto form in the direction of cumulative effect, and the performance here is exciting, with...
Read Less
