Camille Saint-Saëns composed his Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33, in 1872, when he was 37 years old. He wrote this work for the French cellist, viola da gamba player and instrument maker Auguste Tolbecque. Tolbecque was part of a distinguished family of musicians closely associated with the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, France's leading concert society. The concerto was first performed on January 19, 1873, at the Paris Conservatoire concert with Tolbecque as soloist. This was considered a mark of Saint-Saëns' growing acceptance by the French musical establishment. Sir Donald Francis Tovey later wrote "Here, for once, is a violoncello concerto in which the solo instrument displays every register without the slightest difficulty in penetrating the orchestra." Many composers, including Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff, considered this concerto to be the greatest of all cello concertos. Yo-Yo Ma's recording of five "Great Cello Concertos" includes Dvořák's, Elgar's, Haydn's 2nd, Saint-Saëns' first, and Schumann's.

Structure and overview

Saint-Saëns broke with convention in writing the concerto. Instead of using the normal three-movement concerto form, he structured the piece in one continuous movement. This single movement contains three distinct sections. Those sections, tightly structured, share interrelated ideas. Saint-Saëns' contact with Franz Liszt while serving as organist at the Église de la Madeleine may have led him to use cyclic form in his orchestral works. Along with the solo cello, the concerto is scored for an orchestra consisting of 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings. The work can be split into three different sections as follows: Saint-Saëns very often uses the solo cello here as a declamatory instrument. This keeps the soloist in the dramatic and musical foreground, the orchestra offering a shimmering backdrop. The music is tremendously demanding for soloists, especially in the fast third section. This difficulty has not stopped the concerto from becoming a favourite of the great virtuoso cellists.

Recordings