Edouard Lalo was already fifty-one when his Violin Concerto brought him the first taste of success as a composer. Over the next eighteen years a series of outstanding works, including the opera, Le roi d’Ys, together with the Symphonie espagnole, Concerto russe and a fine Cello Concerto, established him as one of the major French composers in the late nineteenth century. Having studied the cello as a young man, Lalo had a deep understanding of the instrument, and produced a concerto that combines the yearning intensity of the central Intermezzo with brilliant virtuosity in the outer movements. The Cello Sonata, composed in 1856, is essentially a lyrical work.