ORFEO International – Catalogue

CDs

C 659 081 A

Dimitri Schostakowitsch

Orfeo • 1 CD • 67min

Order No.: C 659 081 A

BBC Music Magazine Disc of the Month
BBC Music Choice
Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik Bestenliste
Gramophone Recommended
The Strad Selection
Supersonic pizzicato
Excepcional scherzo

Reviews:

Records of the Year 2008
Sunday Times


Composers/Works:

D. Schostakowitsch: Concerto No. 1 E flat major op. 107 for Violoncello and Orchestra
D. Schostakowitsch: Concerto No. 2 G major op. 126

Artists:

Daniel Müller-Schott (Violoncello)
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks (Orchester)
Yakov Kreizberg (Dirigent)

With his recording of Dmitri Shostakovich’s two cello concertos, Daniel Müller-Schott
Daniel Müller-Schott
Foto: Christine Schneider
Daniel Müller-Schott has set out to explore the later works of a composer whose cryptic style represents a particular challenge for the performer, such were the political and personal circumstances of the composer’s life of suffering. As with Shostakovich’s symphonies, the cello concertos contain an undertow of constant menace culminating in blatant outbursts of the most aggressive sonorities and rhythms. Even though both the First Cello Concerto op. 107 of 1959 and the Second Cello Concerto op. 126 of 1966 were written after Stalin’s death in 1953, the threat of Soviet dictatorship and censorship continues to be palpable, as is the composer’s attempt to counter these dangers by means of encoded messages that lie between the notes. In order to convey these messages both emotionally and intellectually, Daniel Müller-Schott brings all his musical abilities and knowledge to bear on both works. More than once he allows the listener to feel the sense of heart-rending climax which according to the dedicatee and first performer of both works, Mstislav Rostropovich, the later piece in particular achieves. With the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Yakov Kreizberg, Daniel Müller-Schott C 659 081 A
C 659 081 A
offers an exemplary interpretation of both concertos that also does justice to the peculiarities and details of their instrumentation, notably the otherworldly, Mahlerian sounds of the celesta that accompany the floating harmonics in the solo cello part in the op. 107’s opening Moderato and, more generally, in the second movement of the Second Concerto, in which Shostakovich uses a popular song from the time of the Russian Revolution to produce a grotesque dance with dissonant fanfares. No less typical of Shostakovich are the reminiscences of composers such as Mussorgsky and the set of variations in the final movement of the op. 126 Concerto, written at a time when the composer was already marked out by death, a piece described by Daniel Müller-Schott as Òperhaps the most emotionally multilayered of all cello concertosÓ, the abrupt ending of which is as disturbing as it is profoundly moving.


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