Canter Bridge

The Austrian Joseph Haydn (1731-1798) and the Italian Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) eased central and southern Europe through its transition from the Baroque to the Classical periods with considerable aplomb. Fortunately, both of these neatly overlapping composers leveraged the potential of the cello in order to do so.

Ludovit Kanta (cellist), the Capella Istropolitana, Peter Breiner (conductor), and a Naxos executive team that must have had its Wheaties here give us an enormously enjoyable version of Haydn’s concertos no. 1 and 2 and Boccherini’s Cello Concerto in B Flat. More controversially, they provided to their contracted artists—alternatively, the latter may have simply taken it—license to let the tradition grow under foot.

The result is a series of decidedly non-period and decidedly jazz-inspired cello cadenzas, the stuff of controversy between purists and their musical opposites. I find these inventions delightful, but hasten to add that they take several large steps from what might be called a ‘constitutionalist’ view of art music. Haydn and Boccherini doubtless never heard such sounds and would have considered them alien to their own if they had.

But one or both of them might have smiled and, perhaps, loosed the Austro-Hungarian-Italian version of the word ‘awesome’.

Or perhaps a grimace.

The beauty is, you don’t have to decide.

Naxos has instead made it easy to enjoy a superb and innovative performance of two past masters of the cello and its accompaniment for a song.

What’s not to like?