Lalo, Edouard

Édouard Lalo

Concerto en fa pour violon et orchestre op. 20 (1873)

(b. Lille, 27 January 1823 – d. Paris, 22 April 1892)

I Andante (p. 1) – Allegro (p. 3)
II Andantino (p. 58) –
III Allegro con fuoco (p. 66)

Preface
In his native France Édouard Lalo, a composer of Spanish ancestry, always stood somewhat in the shadow of César Franck, Camille Saint-Saëns, Georges Bizet, Jules Massenet, and Gabriel Fauré. Nor has his music entered the international repertoire, apart from two pieces – the five-movement Symphonie espagnole, op. 21 (his second violin concerto, composed in 1874), and the D-minor Cello Concerto of 1877. In this latter respect he resembles his German counterpart, Max Bruch. That the French accorded him so little notice was probably related to his deep veneration of the great German masters Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann, who remained his timeless ideals, and to his lack of a conspicuously nationalist stance. Yet his music probably sounds, to non-French ears, no less French than that of Franck or Saint-Saëns, Bizet or Massenet. Later it was Claude Debussy who discovered and excitedly wrote about the vintage refinement of Lalo’s ballet score Namouna (1881-82).

Lalo is particularly well-known for his concertos, less so for his other orchestral music, and still less for his operas Fiesque (1866-68), Le Roi d’Ys (1875-87, his outstanding theatrical success), and the unfinished La Jacquerie (1889). What continues to be amazingly neglected are his excellent chamber works, of which the most frequently performed are the three piano trios (the first two written before 1850, the third, in A minor, op. 26, in 1880). But who of us knows his many pre-1850 works for violin and piano, or his Guitare for violin and piano, op. 28 (ca. 1877), or the pieces for cello and piano, of which the Cello Sonata of 1856 stands out in particular? Even his sole String Quartet in E-flat major, published as op. 19 in 1859 and heavily revised as op. 45 in 1880, remains an insider’s tip.

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