Prokofiev: Sinfonia Concertante in E minor for cello & orchestra, Op. 125

‘Gautier Capuçon plays the cello with the control and wisdom of a much older musician. The lightness of his touch and the consistent clarity of his bow strokes are quite admirable in themselves, but when combined with an uncanny sweetness of tone in the higher registers they are breathtaking.’ Gramophone

A Frenchman in St Petersburg … Gautier Capuçon joins Valery Gergiev (making his Virgin Classics debut) and the Mariinsky Orchestra for works by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev

These live performances were recorded in St Petersburg on 24th December 2008 when Gautier Capuçon was the guest of Russia’s leading maestro – and one of the world’s most prominent conductors – the protean Valery Gergiev and his Mariinsky Orchestra. This is Gergiev’s debut on Virgin Classics; Capuçon, of course, is one of the mainstays of the label and this is his third album of solo works with orchestra.

His recording of the Dvorák and Victor Herbert concertos was released in early 2009. The Sunday Telegraph reported that: “This is not the first coupling of these works, but it is perhaps the most distinguished. The works have much in common and Gautier Capuçon makes the most of the music's melodic appeal. The Dvorák receives a powerful and intense interpretation with some superb orchestral solos to match the soloist's eloquence,” while The Guardian found that, in the Herbert, Capuçon “captures the work's rhapsodic ambitions and the lyrical charm of its slow movement perfectly … this version just about has it all.”

Gautier joined his brother, violinist Renaud for a recording of the Brahms Double Concerto, released in 2007. “There's something totally compelling about this performance of the Double Concerto from the first few bars,” wrote The Guardian, “when Gautier Capuçon launches into the opening cello solo with a rhapsodic freedom and expressive abandon that seems to sweep all before it, gathering first his brother Renaud's violin playing and then the Gustav Mahler Jugend Orchestra and conductor Myung-Whun Chung into the same unstoppable flood of lyricism.”

Tchaikovsky’s Mozart-inspired Rococo Variations are a mainstay of the cello repertoire, but Prokofiev's Sinfonia Concertante features less frequently in concerts and recordings. The work was premiered in 1952 by Mstislav Rostropovich, with the equally legendary pianist Sviatoslav Richter deserting the keyboard for the conductor’s baton. Its material is drawn from the composer’s earlier cello concerto, written in the 1930s.

The two works recorded here have an interestingly close musical relationship that is belied by their radically different sound-worlds. Prokofiev’s first work for cello and orchestra was abandoned by the composer after an unsuccesful premiere, and the full score remained unpublished for years. However, a rising star barely in his twenties, Mstislav Rostropovich, found a copy with piano accompaniment and impressed the composer with his performance in December 1947. As Rostropovich remembered from their backstage encounter: ‘Prokofiev told me that after listening carefully to the Concerto he had decided to rewrite it. I reminded him of this each time I met him after that, but without success.’ What followed, in fact, was a completely new work—the Sonata for cello and piano Op 119—and the premiere of that, with Rostropovich eloquently partnered by Sviatoslav Richter (a recording survives), finally persuaded the now-ailing composer to the dramatic revision of the original Concerto. The resulting Symphony-Concerto is now acknowledged as one of the composer’s late masterpieces.

The young German virtuoso Alban Gerhardt was the soloist in a performance at the BBC Proms in 2008 that convinced a loudly appreciative audience of the merits of this work.

It has been recorded here with the first verson, Cello Concerto No 1, a work of undeniable importance to scholars and music-lovers alike. Andrew Litton conducts the Bergen Symphony Orchestra in their second disc for Hyperion.

In the midst of war and state-sponsored terror, one thing in Prokofiev’s life retained its priceless value: friendship. It was for his good friend, Mstislav Rostropovich, that he composed the Sonata for cello and piano, op. 119, and the Sinfonia Concertante, op. 125.

(…) ‘The attraction for cellists lies in the phenomenal technical challenge, the lyrical intensity and the many different roles the soloist, as the main character in this epic, has to play. A great fighting spirit is asked for. If things go well and the dragon is down at the end, the satisfaction is enormous. Besides, who wouldn’t want to be Slava for forty minutes? The presence and inspiration of the big man is all over the piece. (…)

(… ) For this live recording, to have the support of Vassily Sinaisky and this orchestra, that has a decade of Gergiev behind it, was a tremendous privilege. They were exciting days. The choice for the two solo encores, Tcherepnin and Crumb was made to give two examples on a totally different scale from the same early postwar years in which the Concertante was written. The Tcherepnin particularly, is almost on a miniaturist scale.’ (…)

Pieter Wispelwey (from liner notes)

The great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich plays Prokofiev’s haunting and powerful Concerto for cello and orchestra, in a recording made in 1954. The 1956 recording of the Sonata is a tour-deforce by Rostropovich who is joined by the legendary pianist Sviatoslav Richter.

Released here for the first time are two live recordings with the internationally renowned cellist Lynn Harrell, a consummate collaborator with the RLPO and Gerard Schwarz. Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto by its very name acknowledges the complex writing for the orchestra which vies with the solo cello in a contest of virtuosity. The work was written for Mstislav Rostropovich, as was the Second Cello Concerto by Shostakovich, who greatly admired his older colleague’s earlier work, hence the echoes in the concerto’s three-movement structure with a sardonic scherzo in the middle. The coupling of these two works is unique.