Cello Concerto no. 1 in A minor, op. 33

Saint-Saëns wrote the First Cello Concerto in 1872 for Auguste Tolbecque, a cellist who also built and restored instruments, and Tolbecque played it at the Paris Conservatoire on 19 January 1873 — a real event, since the Société des Concerts almost never admitted a living French composer to its programmes. The concerto runs without a break: three sections folded into a single movement, opening not with an orchestral tutti but with one chord and an immediate entry for the soloist, whose line then dominates almost continuously. Shostakovich and Rachmaninov both named it among the finest works for the instrument.