Articles previously written for Examiner.com no longer in circulation on that site
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
June 19, 2009: More virtual Rostropovich concerts
Last month, in writing about "the concert experience through recordings,"
I singled out the world premiere of Sergei Prokofiev's Opus 119 cello
sonata, composed in 1949 by the 22-year old Mstislav Rostropovich, who
performed it with pianist Sviatoslav Richter in the Small Hall of the
Moscow Conservatoire on March 1, 1950. I observed that one could
experience this premiere (at which Prokofiev himself was present)
through the Complete EMI Recordings
Rostropovich box of 25 CDs, 13 of which come from recordings made in
Russia, almost all of which were in concert settings. What is most
impressive is how many of the compositions included among these Russian
recordings are world premieres of works dedicated to Rostropovich. The
composers of these works are not only Russians, such as Dmitri
Shostakovich and Dmitri Kabalevsky, but also Benjamin Britten, Yuzo
Toyama, and Fernando Lopes-Graça. I was thus impressed by not only the
number of compositions that Rostropovich had inspired but also the
extent to which he was able to promote non-Russian music in Russian
concert halls. On the one hand one may classify these recordings as
museum pieces; but, from the point of view of the concert experience,
they are as alive as ever. As "virtual performances" go, they are as
exciting as more recent recital recordings from Carnegie Hall;
and they offer the opportunity to reproduce "first hearings" of a broad
and impressive repertoire of cello music at the hands of one of the
twentieth century's master cellists.
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