CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS wrote his first cello concerto in 1872, at the age of 37, already being a famous composer, conductor, organist, pianist, music critic, one of the founders of the French “Société Nationale de Musique”. Berlioz’s statement about his early works is widely known: “This young man knows everything, the only thing he lacks is inexperience ” He had already composed three of his five piano concertos, the first Violin Concerto and Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, the First Symphony, Opera, Symphonic Poems, various chamber opuses, including two sonatas and a cello and piano suite.

THE CELLO CONCERT No. 1 in A minor op. 33 was written for the cellist, viola da gamba player and instrument maker Auguste Tolbecque (1830 – 1919), who came from a distinguished family of musicians closely associated with the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, France’s leading concert society. The concerto was first performed on January 19^th , 1873 at the Paris conservatoire concert with Tolbecque as soloist and since then the concert ranks among the most popular romantic concerts in the repertoire of the greatest cellists around the world.

The glamorous virtuoso work broke with convention in writing the concerto. Instead of using the normal three-movement concerto form, he structured the piece in one continuous movement. This single movement contains three distinct sections. Those sections, tightly-structured, share interrelated ideas. Saint-Saëns’ contact with Franz Liszt while serving as organist at the Église de la Madeleine may have led him to use cyclic form in his orchestral works, the form being introduced in his famous one-part symphonic poems.