Edward Elgar; Bohuslav Martinů - Cello Concertos (Sol Gabetta)

Information

Composer: Edward Elgar; Bohuslav Martinů

1. (01) Elgar - Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85
2. (05) Martinů - Cello Concerto No. 1, H. 196

Sol Gabetta, cello
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Simon Rattle, conductor (1-4)
Krzysztof Urbański, conductor (5-7)

Date: 2016
Label: Sony Classical
https://sonyclassical.com/releases/88985350792

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Review

Sol Gabetta’s handling of Martinů’s life-affirming First Cello Concerto (1930 55), which over a 25 year period grew from a chamber concerto into a fully fledged orchestral piece, embraces the gamut of colours and technical jinks called for with what sounds like genuine relish. This is superb cello-playing and Krzysztof Urbański directs a vital and sensitive accompaniment. As to the Elgar Concerto, when I reviewed Gabetta’s first recording of the work back in October 2010, I praised it as ‘one of the best around, a heartfelt, tonally rounded performance, intimate and wholly at one with Mario Venzago’s generally subtle handling of the orchestral score’. Venzago was conducting the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, an excellent band, but Simon Rattle’s alert and tonally rich Berlin Philharmonic is in a higher league altogether, and therein lies one of the principal differences between this version from 2014 and its generally more restrained predecessor.

Rattle’s presence can be heard, and felt, in virtually every bar of the score: the way he moulds phrases, nudges details to the fore, bends the line, holds tight to a salient accompanying detail (especially along the lower end of the spectrum) or responds to Gabetta’s characterful solo playing, now rather more stylised than it was before. She’ll toy with slides, vary her vibrato or suspend it altogether, indulge a widened range of dynamics and, at the start of the finale proper, gallop away with tremendous energy, more so than with Venzago.

Printed alongside that original 2010 review was an interview in which Gabetta confessed how important it is to find a different interpretation to Jacqueline du Pré’s. ‘The most terrifying thing to do as a young artist is to try and copy it because you can’t – and of course I wouldn’t want to’, as she put it then. Revisiting that older version now, I hear the ‘purity and clarity’ she was aiming at, but paradoxically the passing of time seems to have allowed her licence to be freer, more outgoing, more emotive and more expressively generous in her approach. Of course Rattle, the Berlin Phil and the live performing environment are likely contributing factors to this subtle rethink but I suspect that Gabetta’s renewed responses to Elgar are more significant still.

...

As to which way you should acquire Gabetta’s fairly unmissable new account of the Elgar, if you’re especially keen on the idea of Rattle’s programme (a very good one) then go for the DVD; otherwise I’d stick with the CD, mainly because, musically speaking, Martinů’s Concerto is such a worthwhile and unusual coupling. The Elgar certainly compares favourably with, among digital options, Natalie Clein, Alisa Weilerstein and Steven Isserlis.

-- Rob Cowan, Gramophone

More reviews:
BBC Music Magazine  PERFORMANCE: **** / RECORDING: ****
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2017/Oct/Elgar_Gabetta_88985350792.htm
https://www.thestrad.com/reviews-old/elgar-cello-concerto-in-e-minor-op85-martin-cello-concerto-no11/2048.article
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/dec/01/elgar-cello-concerto-martinu-cello-concerto-cd-review-so-gabetta-simon-rattle-urbanski
https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/reviews/elgar-martinu-cello-concertos-sol-gabetta/
https://www.ft.com/content/878c3086-b605-11e6-ba85-95d1533d9a62

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Edward Elgar (2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, whose many works have entered international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, chamber music and songs. Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Elgar was the first composer to take the gramophone seriously, and made recordings of most of his major orchestral works between 1914 and 1925.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Elgar

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Bohuslav Martinů (December 8, 1890 – August 28, 1959) was a Czech composer of modern classical music. Martinů began as a violinist of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. In the early 1930s he found his main font for compositional style, the neo-classical as developed by Stravinsky. With this, he expanded to become a prolific composer, who wrote almost 400 pieces, included 6 symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. He is compared with Prokofiev and Bartók in his innovative incorporation of Central European ethnomusicology into his music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohuslav_Martin%C5%AF

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Sol Gabetta (born 18 April 1981) is an Argentine cellist. She won her first competition at the age of 10, soon followed by the Natalia Gutman Award. Her teachers include Christine Waleska, Leo Viola, Ivan Monighetti, Piero Farulli and Ljerko Spiller. Gabetta won the Crédit Suisse Young Artist Award in 2004. Other prizes have included the Gramophone Award for Young Artist of the Year in 2010, Echo Klassik Awards and Diapason d'Or. Gabetta has made commercial recordings for Sony and Deutsche Grammophon. Gabetta performs on a cello by G. B. Guadagnini dating from 1759.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Gabetta
http://www.solgabetta.com/

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