Description
Boccherini's cello concertos, some twelve in number, were written comparatively early in his career, all dating from the years during which he toured as a virtuoso. And by the way: what a virtuoso! Presuming that he could play his own music—which I think is a fair presumption—he must have been a truly wonderful player; one can feel it in the writing, as challenging as anything composed for the cello before the twentieth century, at least. (The great Russian cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, an avid Boccheriniphile, considered Boccherini to have been, on the evidence of his music, the greatest cellist of all time.)