Romantic Cello Concerto No. 5

[FBerwald]

Hyperion just announced vol . 5 of the Romantic Cello Concerto - Camille Saint-Saëns

http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68002&vw=dc

This one might bring negative reactions from many of us as we already have very good recordings of the work, but I am excited because this series seems to have finally picked up some speed. 

[Alan Howe]

A release of no interest at all to me, I'm afraid.

[TerraEpon]

Quite odd choice to record La Muse et La Poete instead of the Suite Op. 16. Also missing the Romance, Op. 36
(http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Works-Orchestra-Camille-Saint-Saens/dp/B001FXSN4Q has these....a very enjoyable disc)

[jerfilm]

Pity - I'm with Alan.  They're not among my favorites even with a very good recording. 

Sigh......

[eschiss1]

I quite like the 2nd myself (though that may be because (1) I like Saint-Saëns generally and much of the time, (2) the 2nd used to be much harder to find on recording or on radio than it is now (the one or two recordings that there were of it, I hadn't yet located at the time, though they weren't, to be fair, that obscure...) - well, for whatever reason, just finding it felt sweet, somehow. ...

Still, no argument, would very much like to see this series expand its bounds by a lot. I wonder e.g. what Friedrich Hegar's concerto Op.44 sounds like... (his string quartet Op.46 sounds very impressive in the 2 hands of Steve's Bedroom Band, in my opinion.)

[jerfilm]

Cellists sometimes complain of the paucity of cello concertos.  Which makes me laugh and I want to say, Have you researched that question at all???

How about, for starters, Henry Hadley, Charles Martin Loeffler,  George T Griffes to name a couple of Americans.  Or how about Julius Weismann, Heinrich Hoffman, Karl Goldmark,  Jacob Major, Julius Klengel 2, Hugo Becker in A.......?  That's the short list.....

J

[FBerwald]

the Karl goldmark is a mistake right?

[jerfilm]

Goldmark came from an older edition of Groves.

[eschiss1]

I see that Weigl wrote one (score & parts @ FLP) - that could be good, Karl Weigl's music has proven very much worth listening to. (But then, counting well- and less well-known works, classical Romantic and modern, they have some 200-plus cello concertos in score or in scores and parts in that library's collection (including the Hegar I mentioned, which IMSLP has in score), 160-odd in the Fleisher collection alone. Can't speak to the quality of most of them of course, but I have heard several interesting unusual cello concertos recently that were new to me (probably too recent in time, though mostly quite expressive) from a Brilliant Classics recording of Russian cellists (and pianists, and violinists) (a gift- I couldn't afford that 100-CD set... long story.) ... but yep... too few concertos? Too few concertos they know and are comfortable playing, maybe. A case of "insert the missing words" they expect you know they're saying, I suppose...

[eschiss1]

Why only Julius Klengel's 2nd concerto, btw ("Julius Klengel 2")? He wrote at least 4 and a double concerto (violin & cello)... I know no reason to prefer one over another (hrm- do we have a recording of part of his 2nd uploaded? I forget- oh, right. There's part of a recording of either one of those or one of Davydov's in the Brilliant Classics album, that's what it was, but it was incomplete, lacking the finale, grumble mumble mumble.)

[mjkFendrich]

Cellists sometimes complain of the paucity of cello concertos.  Which makes me laugh and I want to say, Have you researched that question at all???

As members of this forum we are familiar with dozens of unknown & rewarding concertos, of course.
I've recently read the following anecdote about Rostropovich on Kenneth Woods' (conductor of the wonderful Gal cycle) blog:
http://kennethwoods.net/blog1/2013/08/10/the-10-greatest-must-hear-cello-concerti-of-the-last-50-years/

Whether it was folklore or fact, I'm not in a position to say, but in the latter years of his career, it was reputed that Rostropovich's fee for a performance of the Dvorak Cello Concerto hovered around $80,000. For any of the 60 or so works written for him, however, he was willing to lower the fee to $8,000, and the discount apparently extended to almost anything off-the-beaten-path-ish. Depressingly and unsurprisingly, he mostly went around the world playing the Dvorak Concerto over and over again.

[edurban]

"...How about, for starters, Henry Hadley, Charles Martin Loeffler..."

Am I misremembering, or isn't the Loeffler concerto lost?  I would be delighted to know that wasn't the case.

David

[Gareth Vaughan]

Bortkiewicz

[izdawiz]

  Goldmark Cello Concerto,  interesting .... I know there is a recording of Goldmark and  Zemlinsky's  Cello Sonata played by Wallfisch..  real good stuff 

[eschiss1]

Re Rostropovich: fortunately, there are still a fair number of off-air broadcasts (and some recordings) of him performing quite a few of the works written for him or otherwise off the beaten path (generally 20th century, incl. as I recall Myaskovsky, Vlasov, both Khachaturians (uncle Aram and nephew Karen), Weinberg, others) but what in the world says his tastes need to have been those of this forum?) ( - which doesn't contradict that statement but allows one to hear him in something other than the (admittedly, fine) Dvorak 2nd concerto, Tchaikovsky variations, etc.