HENRI DUTILLEUX Concerto for Cello Performed by Mstislav Rostropovich When Mstislav Rostropovich, who commissioned the work, played the Dutilleux cello concerto at the Aix-en-Provence festival in July 1970, it was the 52nd new composition to be premiered by the great, Russian artist. Shortly thereafter, however, Rostropovich, who had written a letter in support of Solzhenitsyn, and his wife, Galina Vishnevskaya, suddenly found themselves stripped of all artistic privileges in the Soviet Union, and it was not until late in 1971, following their exile from Russia, that Dutilleux allowed the work to be performed again. “Tout un monde lointain“ (“An Entire Faraway World“), which takes its overall title as well as the titles of its five interrelated movements from verse by 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire, immediately plunges the listener into a world of both mystery—which the ambiguous, final trill does nothing to resolve—and exotic sensuality. Incredibly rich in sonorities, from scintillating orchestral outbursts to bizarre mirror-glissandi, “Tout un monde lointain“ also borrows from a vast palette of harmonic and choral colorations that define a brooding moodscape above which the solo cello, particularly full-voiced in Rostropovichs gifted hands, soars much like Baudelaires albatross. Consistently irregular in meter, non- and even atonal, and pointillistic, Dutilleuxs masterpiece nonetheless reaches about as deeply into the soul as is possible.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 16:00:00 +0000
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