VFO / MANFRED HONECK / GAUTIER CAPUÇON

‘The cello is a beautiful instrument, but its place is in an orchestra or in chamber music. As a soloist, it is inadequate; the middle registers sound magnificent, but the high notes nasal and the low notes buzz,’ Dvořák is said to have told his pupils. It is hard to imagine that Dvořák had just composed the Concerto which, perhaps more than any other, establishes the cello as a soloist. In fact, the idea of composing a new Concerto came to Dvořák after hearing Victor Herbert, the great American cellist, in New York, who revealed to him the possibilities of the instrument. The score of the Second Concerto also reflects Dvořák’s grief at learning of the serious illness of his sister-in-law Josefina, with whom he was very close. Distraught, the composer incorporated into his work a melody previously composed for her: the Lied Lasst mich allein. The gentle melancholy that emanates from the work is coupled with the composer’s taste for emphases, as he had just completed his greatest masterpiece: the New World Symphony. It’s a taste shared by Gautier Capuçon, whose expressive vibrato and sense of line have made him a favourite performer of this Concerto. 

The panoply of Straussian delights in the second half of the programme strikes a balance between the great classics, such as the Kaiserwaltzer, bucolic or humorous extracts from his operas (Im Krapfenwald’l, Der Zigeunerbaron), the Viennese refinement of the master’s most subtle orchestrations (Die Libelle), and the more energetic dances (Auf der Jagd, Unter Donner und Blitz). Manfred Honeck, who was violinist with the Vienna Philharmonic before embarking on his internationally acclaimed conducting career, knows better than anyone the challenges of this rich repertoire.