One of the greatest cellists of the eighteenth century, Boccherini was also a prolific composer, who masterfully incorporated the cello into works representing genres which has traditionally used the cello for harmonic support. While some of Boccherini's cello concertos remained within the technical confines of the late Baroque idiom, several works fully exploit the instrument's technical and sonic capabilities, featuring double stops, the thumb position, and brilliant runs in the highest register. This work is Boccherini's most famous concerto, and it is easy to understand why this work is so popular when one thinks of the sheer beauty of the music. Opening with a concisely effective orchestral introduction, the first movement, with its richly expressive themes, rewards the soloist with a score in which virtuosity is clearly sublimated to create a musical narrative of exceptional elegance and charm. Boccherini allows the soloist to display a rich variety of sonorities, including the cello's entrance chord, as well as the mellifluous legato arpeggiation figure centered on a ostinato open A string. A certain melancholy aura that haunts the first movement blossoms into a poetically phrased lament in the extraordinary second movement. Dispelling the sadness of the second movement, the final movement celebrates the spirit of play, inviting the soloist to delight in a manifestation of lightness and pure energy.

Interestingly, however, this concerto owes much to the nineteenth century German cellist Friedrich Grützmacher, who used the original manuscript to create what some scholars regard as a profoundly altered work in 1895. The first and third movements of this concerto as we know it are, in fact, Grützmacher's amalgamation of of Boccherini's original version and the Cello Sonata in B flat major, G. 565. Significantly, the second movement of Grützmacher's version comes from the second movement, without the ritornello, of Boccherini's Cello Concerto in G major, G. 480. The ritornello that Grützmacher includes in this movement is of mysterious origin, possibly his own work. While the musical ideas in this work are undoubtedly Boccherini's, the work may owe much of its popularity to Grützmacher's creative orchestration and phrasing.

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