Luigi Boccherini

Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini(1743-1805), is best known for his contribution to chamber music, in particular the string quartet and quintet. He was also one of the earliest great cello virtuosos. Born in Lucca, Italy and trained in Rome, he played for a short time in the orchestra of the Italian composer Giovanni Battista Sammartini and later became composer at the courts of Spain and Prussia. Most of his more than 350 works are trios, quartets, and quintets for strings. His compositions are marked by great elegance and refinement of style, and in many the cello part is especially prominent. Of his quintets, that in E major (op. 13 no. 5; also numbered as op. 11) is particularly known for its Minuet, perhaps his best known work. His cello works include six sonatas for cello and basso continuo and several concertos. He composed two operas and a mass. His only complete work (see below) to be regularly performed today is the Cello Concerto in B flat G.482.

1. Allegro moderato
2. Adagio (non troppo)
3. Rondo

Despite spurious origins and the opprobrium heaped upon it in recent years by musicologists, the Grützmacher arrangement of Boccherini's B flat Cello Concerto still retains its prominent place in the cello repertoire, remaining defiantly popular with both performers and audiences, for whom the matter of authorship seems less important than the music itself.

Even though it is a liberally arranged concoction of no fewer than 3 of Boccherini's works for cello there is much to enjoy in this concerto. Despite the late nineteenth century trappings, Boccherini's style is unmistakable. Characteristically buoyant, its forward thrust is frequently softened by attention to melodic detail and phrasing. The result is essentially melodic music of suavity and elegance. It may lack some of the formal rigor of the great Viennese composers, but replaces their occasional austerity with charm and sophistication.

The opening sonata-style movement is characterised by two delightfully contrasted themes, the first, alert and lively, the second (marked dolce) more gentle, each extended in turn with virtuosic figuration, providing the soloist with a vehicle for restrained display. The short development section is unusual in that it introduces an entirely new double-stopped theme in D minor.

The second movement in G minor, which is rapturously beautiful has the sighing melancholy qualities of a lament. Small wonder that Grützmacher (a virtuoso cellist himself) succumbed to the temptation to include it.

Though the final rondo is the most unconventional and the least formally convincing of the movements, it still forms a fitting finale to a thoroughly worthwhile and enjoyable work, and seems to represent an experiment with cyclic form. The dotted rhythm of its jaunty recurring theme, introduced by the cello after the briefest of preambles, clearly derives from the first movement, as does the double-stopped first episode, but the diverse material introduced and re-used in the remaining episodes is less coherent structurally. There is no doubt, however, that, given the advocacy of a fine orchestra and soloist it serves well to demonstrate the many different facets of their virtuosity.