Prokofiev’s demanding, conceptually lopsided Cello Concerto, failed
at the box office and has been little heard. Indeed, the only
significant on-disc competition for Steven Isserlis’s blazing live
account comes from the 2000 recording made by the late Alexander
Ivashkin. With a Russian cellist and orchestra, the music sounds
deceptively ‘Soviet’ so that we experience it counterfactually as a
variant of the entity it would become years later when refashioned for
Mstislav Rostropovich as the Symphony-Concerto, Op 125. Isserlis’s
reading may yet mark a step change in the reception history of the 1930s
original. No matter that Paavo Järvi’s accompaniment feels
super-efficient rather than comparably spontaneous. Applause is excised.
While
you might not consider the hard-edged companion concerto a natural
Isserlis piece, the cellist has played it a good deal. Distinctly brisk,
except in the initial Allegretto, the new studio interpretation is
flexible rather than lightweight or disconnected in feeling, with no
lack of soulful emoting. In the first movement Isserlis conjures some
surprising, visceral sounds from his instrument, ratcheting up the
tension with a febrile, nervy vibrato up high. Being less comatose than
usual, the second movement can afford to proceed in longer breaths, the
not-quite-immaculate solo line spurning vibrato one moment, sliding
romantically the next.
Yes, Rostropovich was grand and
implacable, more lyrical too in a sense, but you’ll have one or other of
his Shostakovich recordings already and he was understandably committed
to the revamped version of the Prokofiev. The present disc has its own built-in encore, as arranged by Gregor Piatigorsky, the émigré virtuoso
for whom Prokofiev began his concerto and with whom Isserlis himself
intended to study. The soloist contributes his own lively and
individualistic booklet-notes, enhancing the value of a fascinating, I’d
say unmissable project. Sympathetic miking ensures that his relatively
modest sound is never swamped even if the suggestion of insectile
buzzing is not wholly avoided. (Gramophone)
