Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Cello Concerto No.1, Op.107
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla
Soloist: Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Decca Records, printed in the EU
Cello Concerto No.1
1st movement: Allegretto
2nd movement: Moderato
3rd movement: Cadenza - Attaca
4th movement: Allegro con moto
What a week—old Joe has gone fishing…and what a relief his shoal brought to us—anyways, this isn’t the place for politics. Elsewhere this week, I had a great all-purpose chat with Michael Mori, the AD of Tapestry Orchestra, for the REMOTE podcast. Please check it out on Spotify, and pass it on to all the opera folks in your life. And here’s the weekly shameless plug of my other little digital mag baby, smART Magazine at www.smartbylighthouse.com. We’re putting together Issue #2 at the moment and it’s looking good, can’t wait to share it with you on December 4th, please and thank you for checking out Issue #1 in the meantime.
The little stretch of Russian composers to close out 2020 begins this week with Shostakovich (and continues the week after the next with Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky), and what a thoroughly invigorating week it’s been. Despite the approximately seven years that I’ve been listening to the first movement of this Cello Concerto #1 on the shuffle, this is my first time meeting the rest of the family, so to speak. At its full length, it’s only more apparent how utterly deranged every instrument sounds: as if they’re all attempting a poor but spirited piccolo imitation; I’ve never heard the french horn sound so coarse—like a muted trumpet—particular its support of the four-note-motif of the first and last movements; even the clarinet trades its cool and collected croak for an uncharacteristic staccato quack.
My newly-acquired tick this week is definitely walking around the apartment muttering ‘Sheku Kanneh-Mason’—move aside Yehudi Menuhin, there’s a new favourite name in classical music. Sheku-magic began for me a couple weeks back after watching his performance of the Elgar Cello Concerto, and I’ve been in the thick of it this week via his recording of Shostakovich with the equally bright and nascent stardom of conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.
Meeting the rest of the family — it’s the dynamic range that’s the most unexpected feature of this concerto for me. Lost in the steady oscillations of the second movement, it’s easy to believe you’re listening to a work completely different from the vigorously animated Allegretto. The four-note motif which opens on solo cello is really the flag this concerto flies for it’s entirety, which is momentarily buried in the blue-haze of the slow movement and resurrected by stealthy variations at the bottom end of the meditative cadenza, and set ablaze in the short and blistering reign of the finale. The timpani hits different every time in that finale—not unlike the same jolt of energy of Biden’s fist-on-lectern thumping during his acceptance speech. Weeks from now I’ll still be whistling that theme which, come to think of it, is incredibly homologous to my favourite piece of music by Shosty—the second movement of the String Quartet No.8—wherein the famous DSCH motif is similarly hammered home over and over till it’s stuck in your teeth.
SONG OF THE WEEK: ‘Memorial’ — Devendra Banhart
“Green Park - Blue Haze” — Andrew Gifford, 2012
Time, time, up and down the blue screen
It's dawn and I'm insane
Love's just a word and not what the word means
But I'll say it just the same
Blue Haze — There’s a line from that John Hiatt song, ‘Long Time Comin’’, that for me captures the precise hue in which a memory lives on: I still see you in that silver blue dress, like I never had moved on.
So who’s trailing a blue sillage in the vast halls of your memories?
I learned this week that blue was the first colour we evolved to see, does that not mean too that the oldest human memories are cast in blue?
Throwback to: YR3 WEEK14, YR2 WEEK14
Click here for the full 2020/2021 roster of selected recordings