Elgar 85 Cello

These two masterpieces are shadowed by the events of the First World War. Elgar’s Cello Concerto, an intensely poignant, reflective and individual musical statement, has enjoyed unflagging popularity among musicians and listeners for over 100 years. By contrast, Frank Bridge’s Oration (Concerto elegiaco) remained unperformed for decades after its early hearings. Yet it shares spiritual affinities with Elgar’s work and serves as a funeral address of huge solemnity and narrative power in its outcry against the futility of war.

The much-anticipated album from a brilliant young American cellist marks one of the most exciting Decca Classics debuts in many years. The conductor Daniel Barenboim has been a fervent supporter of Alisa Weilerstein’s extraordinary talent since he accompanied her in Elgar’s Concerto as part of the 2010 Europa Concert in Oxford, broadcast on TV across Europe. Together, they have made a recording of searing intensity.

Although conceived by utterly divergent characters in lands and times that engender few similarities these days, the cello concertos by Elgar and Myaskovsky make a fascinating coupling due not only to the disparate nature of the composers’ lives and situations, but also, curiously, to the common ground they tread. Both men were in their early sixties when writing what was their only concertante work for the instrument, and the prevailing mood of both concertos is one of aristocratic wistfulness married to a mastery of form and rhetoric. They strike the listener almost as elegies, predominantly ruminant and rarely displaying the cut-and-thrust heroics that are so often an integral part of the concerto genre.

Sol Gabetta has established herself as one of the most promising cellists to emerge in the first decade of the 21st century, with a substantial international career as a soloist and with a growing number of recordings. While she has drawn most attention for her performances of the standard concerto and chamber music repertoire, she has also championed contemporary works by composers as diverse as Takemitsu, Ligeti, Gubaidulina, Rihm, and Vasks.