Shostakovich / Weinberg / Lutoslawski: Cello Concertos
$32.00
Out of Stock6+ weeks add to cart
SHOSTAKOVICH / WEINBERG / LUTOSLAWSKI
Shostakovich / Weinberg / Lutoslawski: Cello Concertos
Nicolas Altstaedt (cello) / Deutsches Symfonie-Orchester Berlin, Michal Nesterowicz
[ Channel Classics / CD ]
Release Date: Thursday 1 September 2016
This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.
We proudly annouce a new artist on Channel Classics: German/French cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, renowned for his creativity and versatility, in captivating performances of repertoire on both gut and modern strings.
On this first recording with Channel he combines music of three comtemporaries.
Weinberg, for the western world a well-kept secret of the Soviet Union, was born in Warsaw. In 1939, with German troops at his heels, Weinberg fled to the Soviet Union where met Shostakovich, who he viewed as his teacher. With a considerable dash of klezmer music, particularly in the second movement, he seems to have added his own signature to his Cello Concerto.
Shostakovich composed both his Cello Concertos for his good friend Mstislav Rostropovich. No. 1 contains one of the longest cadenzas of all solo concertos and a finale that is described as 'the will to live, as a conquest in the struggle for happiness'.
An enormous discipline in terms of form may be discerned in Lutoslawski's music.
He had studied mathematics for several years, and in his works he aimed to create clearly perceptible forms and contours. In Stalinist Poland Lutoslawski's Little Suite was embraced and acclaimed as an exemplary model of realism.
"Nicolas Altstaedt has evidently taken the piece to his heart, and his playing is of a subtlety and command to match that of Claes Gunnarsson on Chandos…in the Shostakovich Concerto, too, there are many pages where Altstaedt needs fear no comparison, in a market full of first-rate accounts" (Gramophone)
"Shostakovich's flamboyant 1959 work is a classic, arguably the greatest cello concerto of the 20th century, which Alstaedt plays with easy bravura; and there's classy participation from Berlin's great DSO under a Polish conductor." (Sunday Times)
"Altstaedt's muscular playing does justice to a distinctive, powerful piece [the Weinberg]...The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, clean and sonorous in the concertos, provides some snappy light relief with Lutosławski's folksy, piquant Little Suite." (The Guardian)
"The Weinberg is wonderfully played by Nicolas Altstaedt, who brings tone both muscular and soft-grained to illuminate the work's contrasting facets…this is a notably warm performance thanks to good rapport with the orchestra under Michal Nesterowicz" BBC Music
Tracks:
Lutosławski:
Little Suite (Mala suita)
Shostakovich:
Cello Concerto No. 1 in E flat major, Op. 107
Weinberg:
Cello Concerto in D Minor, Op. 43
