Nino Rota - Cello Concertos (Dmitry Yablonsky)

Information

Composer: Nino Rota

1. Cello Concerto No. 1: I. Allegro
2. Cello Concerto No. 1: II. Larghetto cantabile
3. Cello Concerto No. 1: III. Allegro
4. Cello Concerto No. 2: I. Allegro moderato
5. Cello Concerto No. 2: II. Tema e variazioni. Andantino cantabile, con grazia
6. Cello Concerto No. 2: III. Allegro vivo

Dmitry Yablonsky, cello
I Virtuosi Italiani
Daniel Boico, conductor

Date: 2001
Label: Chandos
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%209892

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Review

ARTISTIC QUALITY: 8 / SOUND QUALITY: 8

One of Nino Rota’s 80-odd film scores, that for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, almost certainly is his best known work in any genre. Rota (1911-79) also composed chamber, operatic, choral, and orchestral works (including several concertos and three symphonies), most of which were cast in a readily accessible neo-classical idiom. However, the majority of Rota’s non-cinematic output remains un-recorded, so it’s good that Chandos has taken a fresh initiative with a new disc featuring world-premiere accounts of his two cello concertos. Both works are externally similar in design and impose searching technical demands upon the soloist.

It’s true that the bravura element (and there’s plenty here!) provides the main focus of listening interest, and Dmitry Yablonsky is fully up to the task, realizing dexterous and musically convincing accounts of both works. Particularly impressive is his playing of the complex finale of Concerto No. 1, which requires great agility in the cello’s perilous higher registers. This work uses a fuller brass section, but the more classically oriented Second Concerto needs just two horns in addition to the regular forces. Probably the most interesting music on this disc comes in the Second concerto’s extended variation movement, lasting more than 13 minutes. Yablonsky gives accomplished performances of these unfamiliar works, and receives sensitively balanced accompaniments from Daniel Boico and I Virtuosi Italiani–all of which adds up to a welcome first recording of concertos that merit wider currency.

-- ClassicsToday

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/film/2001/July01/Rota_Cello_Concertos.html
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_cd_review.php?id=176
https://www.amazon.com/Rota-Cello-Concertos-1-2/dp/B00005J71K

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Giovanni "Nino" Rota (3 December 1911 – 10 April 1979) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor and academic who is best known for his film scores. During his long career Rota was an extraordinarily prolific composer, especially of music for the cinema. He wrote more than 150 scores for Italian and international productions from the 1930s until his death in 1979, and was awarded the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Godfather Part II (1974). Alongside this great body of film work, he composed ten operas, five ballets and dozens of other orchestral, choral and chamber works, the best known being his string concerto.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nino_Rota

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Dmitry Yablonsky (born 1962 in Moscow) is a Russian classical cellist and conductor. His mother is famed pianist Oxana Yablonskaya. Yablonsky was educated at the Juilliard School of Music and Yale University. Among his teachers are Lorne Munroe, Aldo Parisot, Zara Nelsova and Otto Werner Muller. For several years Yablonsky has been Principal Guest Conductor of Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and has conducted many orchestras all over the world. He has made more than 70 recordings as conductor and cellist for Naxos, Erato-Warner, Chandos, Belair Music, Sonora, Connoisseur Society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Yablonsky

http://www.dmitryablonsky.com/

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