Vieuxtemps • Saint-saëns • Fauré

Vieuxtemps: Cello Concerto No. 1; Saint-saëns: Cello Concerto No. 1;

‘The Swan’; Allegro appassionato;

Fauré: Elégie, op. 24

Peter Martens (cello);

Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra/bernhard Gueller

Cello Classics CC1033 61 mins

Henri Vieuxtemps, a virtuosic violinist, composed the first of his seven concertos for that instrument in 1840, when he was only 20. In 1877, seven years after the appearance of the seventh and with paralysis putting an end to his success as a performer, Vieuxtemps turned his attention to the cello. His pupil Ysaÿe would later quote him as saying, ‘Not runs for the sake of runs – sing, sing!’

This is borne out at times in his First Cello Concerto, though virtuosity is certainly not absent. Whether or not because of his poor health, perhaps the chief defect in this concerto, as well as in the second and last one, is that sequences are too often exact, so we’re denied the pleasure of surprise. It also means that the logic of the music is unwarrantably extended, so that this first concerto lasts more than 28 minutes, while Saint-saëns’s in the same key of A minor lasts less than twenty.

The French composer’s work was considered by both Rachmaninov and Shostakovich to be the greatest cello concerto ever, so it’s no disgrace to Vieuxtemps to say that it considerably overpowers his own offering, both in its compactness and in the quality of its inspiration. The negativity of this judgment in no way concerns the playing of both soloist and orchestra, which is accurate and largely attentive to the qualities both of these concertos and of the three shorter pieces by Fauré and Saint-saëns – including Fauré’s passionate Élégie and, of course, his teacher’s ‘The Swan’.

Roger Nichols

PERFORMANCE ★★★★

RECORDING ★★★★