Jean-Louis Duport Cello Concerto No. 4

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Have you ever heard of Jean-Louis Duport? I imagine that unless
you are a professional cellist, or someone who studied cello as a
child, you probably haven’t. Even though my sister is a
professional cellist, I had never heard of him before I was asked
to make this show. Duport is a historical figure who has been
almost completely forgotten, though he was part of a fascinating
group of musicians who encountered Beethoven, Frederick the
Great, and even Napoleon! He and his brother Jean-Pierre were two
of the greatest cellists of their era, and Jean-Louis lives on
for cellists as the writer of a set of etudes or studies that are
still used by cellists all over the world to refine their
techniques. But Jean-Louis Duport also wrote 6 cello concertos,
pieces which show his profound connection with the instrument, as
well as his mastery of the style of his time. Today on the show
I’ll take you through one of those concertos, his 4th, but I’m
also going to do something a bit different. Since this will be my
first time encountering the music of Duport, I want to show you
how I might approach this piece as a conductor learning it for
the first time. I’ve been conducting professionally now for
almost 15 years, so there aren’t a lot of pieces that are brand
new to me anymore, but if I were to conduct this concerto, it
would be totally new to me, which means that I approach this
music in a totally different way than a piece I’d conducted a few
times before. So today on the show we’ll go through the piece, as
well as my process for how I would learn a work like this, from
start to finish. Join us!