Passionate cello recalls dark days

…”a stunning pairing”

A new CD brings us two cello concertos written a century apart

Two composers, a century apart, wrote cello concertos inspired by the tragedies of the First World War. In this new release they form a stunning pairing, performed by exciting young French cellist Sébastien Hurtaud with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

The album opens with one of the 20th century’s most well-known concertos, Edward Elgar’s Opus 85 in E minor. The highly emotional music of Elgar’s last significant work was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the “Great War” and combines nostalgic romanticism and dark foreboding. The Cello Concerto was not an immediate success - Elgar’s musical language was seen as somewhat dated in the period between the wars and not until Jacqueline du Pré recorded it in the 1960’s did it become a popular staple of the repertoire.

Composer Gareth Farr’s Cello Concerto was inspired by a moving family story. Farr’s great-great-uncles, three brothers, fought on the battlefields of France and Belgium and never returned. The photos of these handsome young men hang on the wall of Farr’s parents’ home and he pays homage to them in the Concerto.  

The work’s title, ‘Chemin des Dames’ (‘the pathway of women’) is a tribute to women like Farr’s great-grandmother who grieved for her lost younger brothers. It refers, too, to a bloody WW1 battle fought along the Chemin des Dames a century before the work’s premiere.  Farr wrote his work specifically for Hurtaud, who gave the first performances in New Zealand and France, the latter with the Orchestre Symphonique de Lorraine at the Laon Festival close to the battle site.

Cellist Sébastien Hurtaud and composer Gareth Farr in front of the Chemin des Dames in France.

Hurtaud’s passionate performances of both concerti capture the grief, lyricism and rage of the music. Farr’s work opens with the rumbles of war as the cello sings its way into the texture and the music becomes an ardent and urgent conversation between soloist and orchestra. Finally the cello’s ‘human’ voice cries out in anguish and agitation in a virtuosic solo cadenza.

Hurtaud, a highly expressive and communicative musician, has inspired from Farr some of the composer’s most subtle and multi-coloured orchestral writing, brought to life by very fine playing from the NZSO under the baton of Benjamin Northey.

View a short documentary about Gareth Farr’s Cello Concerto and its premiere in France.

Purchase this Rubicon CD of Cello Concertos by Edward Elgar and Gareth Farr with Sébastien Hurtaud (cello) Benjamin Northey (conductor) New Zealand Symphony Orchestra from Marbecks.

This review was first published in the NZ Listener November 2020