Alisa Weilerstein / Pablo Heras-Casado / Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Concertos 1 & 2

Alisa Weilerstein signed an exclusive contract with Decca Classics in 2011. Her first recording under the agreement, a coupling of the concertos by Elgar and Elliott Carter, with Barenboim conducting the Berlin Staatskapelle, was released in January 2013. At the 2014 BBC Music Magazine Awards it scooped the Recording of the Year Award as well as the Concerto Award. The New York Times acclaimed “the soloist’s superb control keenly matched by the conductor’s insightful support”. In April 2014 Decca issued her new recording of the Dvořák Cello Concerto, with Jiří Bělohlávek conducting the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Huffington Post reviewed it is “…as if Dvořák were sending her the still-wet-inked score, straight from his head to her heart and hands”, and the Daily Telegraph described it as “spine-tingling” and “irresistible”.

Alisa is very excited to announce the upcoming release of Shostakovich: Cello Concertos 1 & 2, coming from Decca Classics on September 23. Alisa worked on both cornerstones of the cello repertory with the legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, for whom both concertos were written, and who was a great friend of the composer. Here, she performs the intense but emotionally suppressed first concerto, in contrast with the sarcasm and isolation of the second, with conductor Pablo Heras-Casado and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.