JEAN-LOUIS DUPORT: Concertos for cello and orchestra Nos. 4 – 6 – Peter Hörr, cello & conducting the Hofkapelle Weimar – MD&G multichannel (& 2+2+2) SACD 94315816, 58 mins.**** [Distr. by E1]:
The otherwise remote name of Jean-Louis Duport (1749-1819) is a mantra for serious cello students who will at some point in their studies come across his famous etudes. Only the most devoted Duport acolytes, however, will have actually met up with any of the legendary French cellist’s six cello concertos which helped lay the foundation of modern cello technique. (Only the second and fourth concertos have been recorded before, by Frédéric Lodéon for Erato.)
The lives that both Jean-Louis and his brother Jean-Pierre, also a virtuoso cellist and composer, pretty fabulous, too: They wound up in Berlin during the French Revolution where they became so famous that in 1789 Mozart wrote a set of variations (KV 573) on a minuet by Jean-Pierre. More celebrity-spotting: in 1796, Beethoven joined with Jean-Pierre for early performances of his Opus 5 cello sonatas.
Outwardly similar, the three concertos turn out to have significantly different personalities: No. 4 is more bluster than substance in the outer movements (although the Finale closes brilliantly with the introduction of a totally new theme), but the second movement is an exquisite gem, a lyrical ‘galant’ outpouring which matches anything in the Haydn or Mozart vein.
I would swear that No. 5 borrows heavily and suspiciously from other composers, but No. 6 is very fine, indeed. In every bar, of course, there is evidence of Duport’s great skill at exploiting the cello in both its lyrical and virtuosic modes.
The playing by cellist Peter Hörr, a Concours International de Scheveningen prizewinner and a founding member of the Mozart Piano Quartet, trips as elegantly and gay as could be hoped for, with only an occasionally stumble. The Hofkapelle of Weimar, founded in 2008 and composed of young musicians from Germany’s leading conservatories and orchestras, sports as its concertmaster Marc Gothoni of the Orpheus Quartet.
The lovely sound, recorded in Marienmünster Abbey, is balanced to just slightly favor the soloist whose wonderful textures and colors will be quite intoxicating, and not only to cellists!
– Laurence Vittes
