Lalo • Saint-Saëns Lalo: Cello Concerto; Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto No. 1; Carnival of the Animals – The Swan; Allegro appassionato, Op. 43 Maja Bogdanović (cello); RTS Symphony Orchestra/Bojan Sudjić Challenge Classics CC 72949 53:16 mins
This recording has two drawbacks that are not the fault of the performers: the acoustics of the Belgrade concert hall are unflattering and, in two of the Saint-Saëns pieces especially, the soloist is recorded at a level above that of the orchestra. The very start, of the first movement of Saint-Saëns’s First Cello Concerto, gives us a taste of the ‘boominess’ that will disfigure many of the louder sections of the piece, while the foregrounding of the soloist comes as a considerable shock. A third drawback however is the cellist’s tone, which has an edge, particularly at forte and above in the middle register, that over time becomes intrusive. In quieter passages, the edge tends to disappear, and ‘The Swan’ from Carnival of the Animals is delightfully tender.
The acoustics are more unhelpful to Lalo’s brass-heavy orchestration in the first movement of his Concerto, and whatever delicate phrasing the conductor was trying to elicit is largely lost both here and in the more jaunty middle movement. Maja Bogdanović has a good technique and the many testing moments are never less than perfect as far as notes go, but she does tend to ignore tempo markings, notably at one point in the first movement of the Saint-Saëns concerto where she accelerates on a bar marked ‘rit’. In bar 11 of the first movement of the Lalo concerto there’s also a ‘domino’ or false entry, which really should have been picked up.
Roger Nichols