Cello Concerto in D minor, op. 37

Lalo wrote the D minor cello concerto in 1876 for the Belgian cellist Adolphe Fischer, who gave the first performance at the Concerts Populaires in Paris in December 1877. It followed the Symphonie espagnole by two years and shares its habits: Spanish rhythm used as structure rather than decoration, and a soloist treated as a singer with a large voice rather than as an acrobat. The slow movement alternates a lament with a fast Spanish dance instead of separating them, and the finale is built over an insistent rhythmic tread. It has stayed among the small handful of nineteenth-century French cello concertos in use.