Slava & the Greatest Cello Concertos

The cello has always been an important orchestral instrument, but this “big mournful violin” had to wait till the 20^th century for most of the great concertos written for it. Of course arguably the two finest cello concerti, the ones by Schumann and Dvorak, had already been written by then, but in many ways, it was one man, the insanely gifted, driven Mstislav Rostropovich(1927-2007), who made it all happen.

When the young “Slava”, as he was called, premiered the senior Soviet composer Nikolai Miaskovsky’s Cello Sonata no 2 in the 1940s, his talent and his ability to reveal the potentialities of the cello, really hit Miaskovsky’s friend and younger colleague, Sergei Prokofiev. Prokofiev’s Cello Concerto no 1 had been lying about, a curiously shapeless, yet lyrical work that no one much cared about. It was with Slava’s support and input that he reshaped it into the Symphony Concerto for Cello and Orchestra to great acclaim in 1952. It remains a big work, its pyrotechnics for the cello balanced by its sour eloquence: it is a work I adore but appreciate that it takes time to love.

That was the start of it. Prokofiev’s concerto inspired his younger colleague, Dmitri Shostakovich to write both his Cello Concerti. The 1^st of these ,  is the better-known work, characteristically eloquent and demonic in its energetic last movement. Typically of Shostakovich, the triumph of its ending is ambiguous.

Shostakovich’s concerto created a sensation on its premiere in 1959 and deeply impressed Shostakovich’s far-away British contemporary (and later friend), Benjamin Britten, who in turn wrote his Cello Symphony (1963) for Slava. This is perhaps the biggest and most difficult of all the concertos, moving from almost unbearable intensity to a life-affirming ending.

Slava went on to commission and premier many other important works, well into old age, after his defection to the UK from USSR. He was not the greatest cellist of the 20^th century but the most important. Pablo Casals remains the yardstick against whom cellists measure themselves, and Slava’s own Soviet contemporary, Daniil Shafran was a less famous, but no less talented performer (hear his electric performance of the ProkofievSymphony Concerto). But Slava remains paramount, thanks to his ability to coax and cajole the great composers of his time to churn out great works for him to perform and enrich the cello concerto repertoire beyond the wildest of imaginations. His recordings also remain living testaments to their art and thought.