The young French cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière said in a pre-concert talk at the National Concert Hall, before playing the Dvořák Cello Concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of fellow countrywoman Nathalie Stutzmann, that although he comes from a musical family, he cannot sing.
But sing his cello did on the night as he and Stutzmann, who is also a widely praised contralto, milked the Dvořák for every bit of its abundant melody, soul and passion. Who knows exactly what was going through Dvořák's head when, in the mid-1890s, after much beseeching by his Czech cellist friend Hanus Wihan, he sat down to write a concerto for an instrument whose lower register he thought sounded “too much like muttering”. What seemed to have tipped the balance, as Dvořák wound up his three-year stint in the United States, was his hearing a New York performance of a cello concerto composed by Victor Herbert, better known as a composer of 43 operettas. Dvořák stuffed his own with more earworms than Herbert could have ever dreamt of, with a result that led the Dvořák-sceptic Brahms to opine that had he known a cello concerto could be so good, he'd have written one himself.
The piece is one of the great crowd pleasers, which accounted for the large attendance at the Friday concert, and although Julien-Laferrière was in Dublin for the first time, he said he had loved visiting the city and the feeling was mutual. The 28-year-old Frenchman, both of whose parents are clarinetists and two of whose siblings are professional musicians, had the audience bewitched from his entrance, after a beautiful rendition of the horn solo that Dvořák places at the opening as a taste of what's to come.
Julien-Laferrière gets a lovely, burnished tone from his cello, which he says was made in about 1700 by an anonymous Italian instrument maker. The instrument does not have as large or dark a sound as some Italian cellos of the period and sometimes the orchestra overpowered him, but it was a treat to hear a beautiful instrument played with musicality and grace. Julien-Laferrière has lightning speed when needed, such as in the rapid run to the upper limits of the fingerboard at the end of the first movement. But he also took his time with some of the lovely themes in the second movement, and Stutzmann graciously gave him plenty of space. There was a clear rapport between soloist and conductor, with each of them looking frequently to the other for cues. But an even lovelier vignette was Julien-Laferrière locked in eye contact with leader Joanne Quigley McParland for the cello-violin duet that is the high point of the last movement. It was a total triumph and was followed by way of encore with the sarabande from Bach's Cello Suite No. 2 – just to let you know he's great without an orchestra too.