ÉRIC TANGUY (b.1968): Cello Concertos Nos. 1 and 2.

Description: These two intense and passionate cello concerti exploit every possible expressive characteristic of the instrument, while providing an orchestral context and counterpoint that is both dramatic and highly original. The first, despite its traditional three-movement structure, is the less conventional harmonically and in its treatment of the dialogue between soloist and orchestra. The cello is omnipresent; the bright-textured, deliberately brass and wind-dominated orchestra comments obsessively, neurotically, on the solo line, interrupting it or entering into unstable, agitated dialogue with it. The second, from five years later, is more obviously grounded in tonality (though neither work is remotely atonal); the composer's trademark modal harmony with constant chromatic inflections sounds here close to an overtly post-romantic vocabulary. The work is in four movements; the first two impassioned, then a mysterious, eloquent and very beautiful nocturne, the most conventionally diatonic music in either concerto, then a lively finale in which for the first time in either work the soloist and orchestra come together in a spirit of co-operation, bringing the work to an exhilarating conclusion. Anne Gastinel (cello), Orchestre National de France; Alain Altinoglu.