Boccherini: Cello Concertos Vol 1 No. 1 - 4

"Tim Hugh approaches the music with lightness of touch and exemplary technique. There are cadenza-like flourishes above written accompaniments: notably in 4, which require, and get, extremely precise ensemble. The cellist brings unshowy virtuosity to these cheerful works."
- Hi Fi News & Record Review (Antony Hodgson), November 1999

"[Tim Hugh plays] with exhilerating freshness, rhythmic bite, and, in the central Adagios, lyrical sensitivity."
- The Daily Telegraph, 10th July 1999

Luigi Boccherini was born in Tuscany in 1743, in the beautiful old walled town of Lucca and died in Madrid in 1805. His was a cultured family. His elder brother Giovanni Gastone, distinguished as a dancer and choreographer, was also a poet and wrote opera libretti for Salieri, among others, and the text of Joseph Haydn's oratorio II ritorno di Tobia. His sister, a dancer in Vienna, married Onorato Viganò and was the mother of the famous dancer and choreographer Salvatore Viganò. His father was a professional double bass player and Luigi Boccherini himself made his debut as a cellist at the age of thirteen. In 1757 he went to study in Rome but had only been there a few months when both he and his father were summoned to Vienna to play in the court orchestra. Although barely fifteen years old, his performance apparently made a deep impression on the Viennese musical establishment, which suggests that this reportedly very amiable and affable young virtuoso had plenty of opportunity to shine as a soloist in concertos and in chamber music.

From this time onwards Boccherini's life was a very busy one and involved much travelling. He returned to Lucca on various occasions, finally, in 1764, taking up a position in the musical establishment and retaining his connection there for the following three years. In 1766 he embarked on an extended concert tour with the Lucca violinist Filipo Manfredi, reaching Paris in 1767. Here he had some of his works published and appeared with Manfredi at the Concerts spirituels, among other engagements. It was seemingly in 1768 that Boccherini and Manfredi travelled to Madrid, very probably with the promise of enthusiastic patronage from the Spanish court. Boccherini's principal patron was the Spanish Infante Don Luis for whom he wrote many new works. In the circumstances in which he found himself he was able to continue his particular interest in chamber music, as shown in his first Paris publications, embarking on his famous series of string quintets, with a concertante first cello part.

Boccherini followed the Infante Don Luis to Avila, after the latter's marriage earned official disapproval, but after the death of the Infante in 1785 he was granted a pension of half his salary by the King. In 1786 he was appointed chamber composer to the heir to the Prussian throne, an enthusiastic amateur cellist, who in the following year succeeded his uncle as Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia. There is no record, however, of any visit by Boccherini to the court in Berlin. He sought a renewal of his appointment in 1798, after the death of the king, but this was not granted. According to later members of his family Boccherini was offered a teaching position at the new Conservatoire in Paris, where his music enjoyed considerable esteem, but graciously declined the offer. In Madrid, however, he had for some years enjoyed the support of private patrons and was employed by the French ambassador to Spain, Lucien Bonaparte, who reached Madrid late in 1800.

Throughout his life Boccherini pursued his concert career with enormous energy and at the same time wrote a quite unbelievable amount of music. In his last years, no longer playing but still composing, he appeared to be living in reduced circumstances, in some financial difficulties and no doubt suffering from the recent death of his second wife and also of two daughters. He died in 1805.

Boccherini made an incomplete thematic catalogue of his own works but this was destroyed in the turmoil of the Spanish civil war. Only in 1969 did Yves Gérard publish a new catalogue of the complete œuvre, listing eleven concertos. The twelfth cello concerto was only discovered in 1987 in a library in Naples. The twelve known cello concertos are all probably quite youthful works, written before he settled in Madrid. These works exploit virtuoso technique, a prominent feature of which is the use of extremely fast passage-work in the very highest registers of the instrument, sometimes with additional double-stopping to provide the performer with even greater difficulties.

Concerto No.1 in C major starts with an orchestral tutti that presents some of the typical features of Boccherini's style. The music is open, fresh, uncluttered, yet sensual, optimistic and essentially appealing. In the second theme the clear harmonic palette is delicately shaded by momentary chromatic changes which yield to a repetition of the opening theme. In the slow quaver tread of the very touching Largo which follows, however, we are reminded that the High Baroque is not so far away. The final Allegro has many of the formal characteristics of the first movement, a kind of loose sonata-form. In the cellist's opening theme high and low notes alternate at some speed, as visually as it is audibly impressive. Aldo Pais notes the similarity of the second theme of this movement to the very famous minuet from the fifth string quintet.