Tout un monde lointain…

Mysterious, seductive, dreamlike, this is music that fulfils the promise of its name—which translates to “a whole distant world" and is taken from the poetry of Baudelaire. The writing is evasive, more suggestive than explicit, with an emphasis on colour and enchantment in the modern French tradition of Debussy, and an orchestra with exotic percussion like gongs and bongos. But that said, it’s not a loosely atmospheric tone poem; it’s a concerto, with the spotlight on a solo cello. And the soloist for whom it was completed in 1970 (after a long, 10-year gestation) was Rostropovich, whose performing style, notably forceful and expressive in the cello’s highest register, fed into the composition. There are five movements, each of them prefaced in the score by a mood-provoking line from Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal. In “Énigme”, a 12-note cello theme that will recur throughout the piece emerges from a haze of soft percussion, ending on the same high A that starts the next movement. “Regard” calmly and slowly runs a plaintive cello melody against heavy string chords. “Houles” ("Surges") suggests a seascape, with a frenetically tidal ebb and flow of ideas. “Miroirs” is slowly ecstatic, with appropriately mirrored motifs. And “Hymne” explodes into life with busy rather than lyrical gestures, ending the whole piece on a sustained cello tremolo.