The blurbs advertising this album have it wrong: Shostakovich's blazing Cello Concerto No. 1 in E flat major, Op. 107, was not a "response" to Prokofiev's Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 58, but to its reworking, the Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra in E minor, Op. 125. As cellist Steven Isserlis points out in his excellent and enthusiastic notes, it's not even clear that Shostakovich knew the earlier version, which had a rocky performance history. The original concerto and the Symphony-Concerto are very different ...
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The blurbs advertising this album have it wrong: Shostakovich's blazing Cello Concerto No. 1 in E flat major, Op. 107, was not a "response" to Prokofiev's Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 58, but to its reworking, the Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra in E minor, Op. 125. As cellist Steven Isserlis points out in his excellent and enthusiastic notes, it's not even clear that Shostakovich knew the earlier version, which had a rocky performance history. The original concerto and the Symphony-Concerto are very different works, with the Cello Concerto's giant final set of variations essentially sliced in half and greatly simplified. The earlier work, spiky and difficult, makes a good counterpoint to the Shostakovich, one of the works in which he most perfectly married virtuosity to the grim gloom that animates so much of Shostakovich's later work. This concerto does have a real rip-roaring finale that Isserlis manages without a hint that he's doing anything less than having fun. But the real find here...
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