SHOSTAKOVICH

Cello Concerto No. 1

WEINBERG

Cello Concerto in D minor

LUTOS⇤AWSKI

Little Suite

Nicolas Altstaedt (cello); Deutsches Symphonie-orchester Berlin/ Micha√ Nesterowicz

Channel Classics CCS 38116 71:50 mins

The chief draw of this attractive Russo-polish themed disc is the Cello Concerto of Mieczys⌅aw Weinberg, himself a composer with one foot in each country. Born in Warsaw, he escaped the Nazis by heading to the Soviet Union, where he spent the rest of his life and enjoyed a close association with Shostakovich. One of his undisputed masterpieces and a work of warm-hearted emotional impact, his Cello Concerto shared a similar fate with Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto, written around the same time. In 1948, when Stalin’s cultural clampdown was delivered in the form of the Zhdanov Decree, both concertos had to be put aside. Weinberg’s score was not heard until 1957, when it was premiered by Rostropovich (who later recorded it). Two years later, Rostropovich also premiered the Shostakovich concerto that opens this recording.

Here the Weinberg is wonderfully played by Nicolas Altstaedt, who brings tone both muscular and softgrained to illuminate the work’s contrasting facets – including a dash of klezmer in the second movement. The German-french cellist sounds less sinewy than many in the Shostakovich, yet this is a notably warm performance thanks to good rapport with the orchestra under Micha⌅ Nesterowicz.

Lutos⌅awski’s Little Suite, later regarded by its composer as marginal, was written in 1950 under Poland’s own set of socialist-realist strictures and circumvents them by using folk material from the country’s south-east. Aptly connecting the two concertos, it is a nice sorbet in the middle.