Heinrich Schiff is a cellist I would have loved to see live. His enthusiastic manner of playing, making the music sing and dance, is legendary. He was born in 1951 in a very musical family in Austria. He is not related to the pianist András Schiff, born around the same time (I just had to check that).
On this record he plays the first Saint-Saëns cello concerto, and two Elegies. The elegy by Fauré was originally meant as a cello sonata, and is here presented in the orchestrated version. Fauré wrote it in 1883.
I wrote about elegies earlier, but never explained what they are. Originally an ancient Greek poetic form, elegiac poetry evolved in English literature from serious subjects to specifically a mourning poem for the deceased. The musical term holds the same meaning: a piece of music written in memory of someone.