CDLXVI. BOCCHERINI, Luigi: Cello Concerto #5 in D Major

CDLXVI. BOCCHERINI, Luigi (1743-1805)

Cello Concerto #5 in D Major
1. Allegro con spirito (7:15)
2. Larghetto (5:47)
3. Rondo (4:12)
4. Rondo comodo assai (5:54)
Yo-Yo Ma, cello
The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra
Ton Koopman, cond.

• Born into a musical family in Lucca, Italy.
• Father: Leopoldo, a cellist and double-bass player; Luigi's teacher at age five.
• Uncle: Giovanni Gastone Boccherini, a poet and dancer who wrote librettos for Salieri and Haydn.
• At age nine, began studying with Abbé Vanucci, music director of a local cathedral, at San Martino.
• Age thirteen, sent to Rome to study with Giovanni Battista Costanzi.
• The next year, he went to Vienna, where the court employed him in the Burgtheater.
• Age eighteen, to Madrid, entering into the employ of Infante Luis Antonio of Spain, younger brother of King Charles III of Spain.
• Boccherini did well there, until one day the King expressed his disapproval at a passage in a new trio, and ordered the composer to change it. Like most composers, he was irrirated by this intrusion into his art, and he double the passage instead, which -- of course -- led to his immediate dismissal.
• He then accompanied Don Luis to Arenas de San Pedro, a little town in the Gredos Mountains in Ávila; there and in the nearby town of Candeleda, Boccherini composed many of his most famous works.

Boccherini wrote 12 cello concertos.

First movement

A spirited Allegro ... the solo cello enters first with whole notes, but quickly begins quick ascending and descending scales ...

Koopman wrote the cadenzas.

Second movement

2/4 Larghetto. Beautiful part-writing:

 

Beautiful suspensions:

Third movement

Rondo. The soloist gets in the first word here:

some awesome passage work for the for the soloist ...

Fourth movement

Rondo in 3/4? Koopman's cadenza is especially beautiful here: