Search - Tovey, Boult, Casals :: Cello Concerto in C Major

Great playing, fascinating music, lousy sound

Michael Steinberg | Rochester, NY USA | 07/22/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is probably the only chance you'll get to hear Tovey's 'Cello Concerto--all four movements and 64 minutes of it. Tovey tried without success to get HMV to record the piece, so what Symposium offer is a private recording off a 1937 broadcast. The sound balance is fine but the surfaces run from tolerable to horrid. If you care at all for great 'cello playing, though, or are interested in the compositions of England's greatest writer ON music, it's indispensable. And it turns out to be a pretty wonderful piece, too, although it takes a dozen hearings before it all comes clear.The conventional wisdom about Tovey's music is that it sounds like Brahms. That's almost true about early works like the beautiful clarinet sonata--which sounds like very good Brahms indeed--but it doesn't do justice to this work of the 1930s. There's nothing that would sound outrageous in the 1880s, to be sure, and the point of reference structurally is Brahms; but Tovey's music has a clarity and lucidity that's quite his own.The work is long and the lack of memorable melodies can make it seem more diffuse than it is. But that doesn't mean that it's lacking poetry or emotion. The vast first movement opens with a gorgeous "sunrise" for the soloist, and throughout the first three movements the 'cello keeps returning the music to a grave and inward lyricism. Tovey's intellectual powers hold the first movement's sprawl together, once you grasp the function of the many meditative passages, and the run-up to the cadenza and the coda are both magnificent. The slow movement is intense and dignified in the manner of the corresponding movement of Elgar's second symphony. After a charming, salon-like interlude the final movement pushes off with--a clog dance. It's a rondo, with all of Tovey's worst musical puns (and, of course, the Great Bassoon Joke), a thrilling coda, and an argument between soloist and orchestra over who gets the last note.Casals, to whom the work was dedicated and who always thought of Tovey as a great composer, plays the work with absolute commitment. He was at his peak technically and musically in the interwar years, and even heard the way Tovey modestly advertised it--"an hour of Casals, with orchestra"--the recording is worth every scuffed surface and scratch.Tovey's style must have seemed absurdly retrograde by the time this piece was premiered. We're more tolerant of such "throwbacks" now, but for some reason his music still hasn't been revived--it seems that he alienated so many people in England that he's still being punished for it, more than sixty years after his death. As long as this remains in the catalogue, though, there's a chance to hear a voice that in its sincerity, passion, dignity and sheer intelligence still has a lot to say."

In memory of Tovey!

Hiram Gomez Pardo | Valencia, Venezuela | 12/08/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The presence and significance of Pablo Casals in the musical contour literally broke the expected paradigms of what one expects from a virtuosi; his ambitious projects, as well as his silent but effective proposals motivated and ignited the flame of passion of many composers of priceless talent as in this particular case with always overlooked musician, even in his own country.



The main evidence to support this statement, resides in the fact that since 1949 we still don't know about any other cellist who has accepted the challenge to assume the task to record again the longest Cello Concerto until this date (64 min. aprox.)



This personal tribute was a personal debt and a glamorous acknowledgment to his wisdom, talent and human grandness.



If not by the famous Biography of Juan Alavedra of Casals, many of us would be still ignoring his profound importance as sharp, zealous and clever musician, educated under the most strict rules that really molded but at the same time distorted a promising career, confining to educed spaces.



Casals was aware about his immense value as human being and against the odds, he was a personal propeller of his works.



So, you may consider this work not only as a well deserved tribute in memory of this almost known composer, but the final achievement of a long expected dream made come true.



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