The Latvian composer Carl Davidoff was a virtuoso cellist. Having
studied mathematics at Moscow University, he went to Leipzig’s
Conservatory. Leipzig was the musical capital of Europe from
the mid-19th century, its Gewandhaus spawning chamber, choral
and orchestral concerts since the 1830s and 1840s, when Mendelssohn
was de facto Music Director of the city - including founding
the Conservatory. Others followed such as Ferdinand David, Julius
Rietz and Carl Reinecke, all of whom carried on Mendelssohn’s
musical philosophy of attaining what we might call standards
of excellence today.
Davidoff led the cellos of the Gewandhaus orchestra in 1859
and became professor of cello at the Conservatory. Like so many
virtuosi, he would have preferred recognition as a composer
- he also hated practising. He returned to Russia in 1862 to
take up the prime teaching post at St Petersburg’s music school,
led the cello section at the Italian Imperial Opera, and became
cellist in the Russian Musical’s Society Quartet, led by Leopold
Auer.
Beyond the terrain inhabited by cellists it would be Davidoff’s
second cello concerto - recorded by the same soloist and conductor,
but with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, on CPO 777
263-2 - which is known. The other three are rarities, and you
would be hard pushed to find even the second in a concert programme;
I did it in February 2009 with Leonid Gorokhov.
This disc also includes three short pieces for cello by Tchaikovsky,
so did the earlier disc, though why they are not advertised
on the front covers of either booklet is unclear. Tchaikovsky’s
name will spring to mind on hearing the music by Davidoff, though
an influence from earlier times would be Schumann especially
in the shape of the melodic material and orchestration. The
opening movement of the fourth concerto, with its fearsome cadenza,
is the pick of the bunch, indeed this concerto is as good, if
not better, than the second. Adding music by a far greater composer
is always dangerous, and Tchaikovsky’s Andante cantabile
is the finest music on the disc. Davidoff’s is at least free
of that self-inflicted gloom that seems to surround so many
Russians from Tchaikovsky via Rachmaninov to Stravinsky
and Shostakovich, but it’s hardly surprising considering what
they had to put up with, endless cold, wall to wall half-light
and repressive regimes.
I have reservations about the projection of Wen-Sinn Yang’s
sound; with cellists it’s a perennial problem to balance them
satisfactorily against a full-size symphony orchestra, which
here provides him with accurate and sympathetic support. His
tone is given to thinning out as he advances down the finger-board,
and only in the cadenza are we able to experience his sound
full-frontal. Maybe it’s the unnamed location in Shanghai which
does him a disservice. Naxos, on the other hand, have done cellists
a service by recording the four concertos and thereby reminding
us how fine a cellist Davidoff must have been in his day.
Christopher Fifield
Wen-Sinn Yang (cello) 
