FOUR VISIONS OF FRANCE: Daniel Müller-Schott

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

In Four Visions of France, his newest album (ORF-C988211) for ORFEO, German cellist Daniel Müller-Schott plays five works from the French repertoire

With Alexandre Bloch on the podium leading the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and playing a Matteo Goffriller 1727 cello, Müller-Schott, visits Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor and his Romance in F Major, in the version for cello and orchestra, Édouard Lalo’s Cello Concerto in D Minor, Arthur Honegger’s Cello Concerto, and Gabriel Fauré’s  Élégie, in the version for cello and orchestra.

Müller-Schott, winner of the prestigious Opus Klassik award in 2019 plays Saint-Saëns’ bravura test piece broadly in the opening Allegro, playfully in the Allegretto, and energetically in the closing Allegro. Later the Romance in F Major is tenderly executed by Müller-Schott.

By contrast, the cellist’s take on the Élégie of Gabriel Fauré is all gentleness and delicacy, his mining of the early 20h century sound in Arthur Honegger’s Cello Concerto bespeaks boldness and incisiveness, reflecting the jazz-influenced music of the least stylistically-Gallic member of Les Six.

When it comes to Édouard Lalo’s less-French than most work among those of his contemporaries: the Cello Concerto in D Minor, Müller-Schott embraces the grandiose, quasi-Wagnerian music with no small measure of impassioned fervor. Throughout all of the works featured in this interesting album, the soloist and his colleagues from the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin play with commitment and unimpeachable style.

Rafael de Acha    ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”