Since I never got an answer on a previous thread and am tagging a couple recordings of this, I thought I'd bring the topic back up. To quote what I wrote before:
"Actually there's a bit of an oddity with this one, as it seems to have two seperate finales, one of which -- supposedly the 'correct' one -- is also known as the "Concerto-Rondo". Actually the whole thing is confusing and the linar notes of none of the three CDs the piece is on shed enough light that I can figure out where the heck the other finale came from."
Still really curious. To expand a bit, the recording on Archiv is the 'original' version (supposedly from manuscript with part on top of that, etc). A different manuscript was given to Jean-Max Clement in 1948 who orchestrated movements 2 and 3, and made a few cuts to all of it (including half of the the 'overture'-like intro).
But here's where it gets tricky, as noted above -- in the 'original' version, the final movement is completely different from the Clement. The original one is in fact a piece known as a standalone piece called the 'Concerto-Rondo' (supposedly slightly modified when published stand-alone acording to the Archiv recording) which is completely, as far as I can tell, musically unrelated to the finale of the Clement version outside the fact they are both rondos.
ANY light anyone could shed on this would be helpful...
And yet even MORE mysteries abound here.
The recording on RCA by Ofra Harnoy includes an Andante, which is the middle movement "with richer orchestration". The liner notes go into the fact that Offenbach specifically re-orchestrated the middle movement while leaving the original as its own piece -- which itself is odd because at the time the original was thought to be lost, so how did they know?
But it turns out, it is in fact the supposed 'original' version as recorded on the Arkiv version. And note that this recording was conducted by Antonia de Almeida, who did Offenbach's thematic catalog.
Very very curious...
Hrm. Was this published during his lifetime in any form? When, and by whom? (Probably not by André of Offenbach s/Main... :D but oy the search difficulties there...)
(I do see a concerto by Offenbach mentioned in the late 19th century, but not for cello- it's for piano and toy instruments. ... and now I have been made curious about this!!...)