Sheku Kanneh-Mason performs Elgar's Cello Concerto with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (b. 1986 in Vilnius). The concert was recorded at Royal Albert Hall, London, on August 22, 2019.
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Edward Elgar's Concerto for cello and orchestra in E minor, from the year 1919, is the last major work the composer penned (a Third Symphony remained in draft form at his death in 1934). While the instrumental forces remain basically equivalent to those used in the Violin Concerto, Elgar has amplified the tender, searching intimacy of that earlier work to such a degree that one might call the Cello Concerto not just introspective but searing and almost ascetic. It is an exceedingly complex but immediately touching work that makes a fitting epilogue to Elgar's lifetime in music.
The Concerto is poured into a four-movement mold, yet still takes only about half an hour to perform – far less than any of Elgar's other large instrumental works. This restraint is mirrored by remarkably transparent orchestration. The work begins with four bars of solo cello recitative that firmly outline the home key of E minor. The subsequent Moderato entrance of the orchestra offers little immediate support for that key, really winding down to the tonic only after six bars of restless 9/8 melody built on a single rhythmic cell. During the 12/8 middle section Elgar makes good use of the contrast between E minor and E major. A recapitulation of the opening is made, but soon enough the movement has dissolved into a handful of uncertain pizzicati.
Elgar brings back the opening recitative, much altered (and buoyantly beginning where the first movement's pizzicati left off), to begin the following Scherzo. After twice pleading with the orchestra to join its cause, the cello finally rouses the group into an eighth note driven perpetual motion (Allegro molto). Elgar paints a miniature portrait of his own very characteristic lyric style in the relatively brief E flat major second theme.
A wonderful melody in B flat major is sung by the soloist throughout the Adagio third movement. Here Elgar's indebtedness to Schumann, the slow movement of whose own cello concerto also employs this song without words approach, is clearly evident. The life span of this one melodic strand is a bare 60 bars, yet it conveys deeper passion than do five times that many bars of the composer's earlier music. The movement ends on the dominant, paving the way for an attacca opening of the Finale.
After initially falling in with the B flat major of the Adagio, the Finale makes an eight-bar move back to its rightful E minor tonal center. The main idea of the movement (marked, like so many of the composer's favorite thoughts, "nobilmente") is given out first by the soloist in half-recitative and then, after a rude tutti interruption and a brief pause, by the entire ensemble, Allegro non troppo. A second theme recalls both the G major tonality and the impish sentiment of the Scherzo movement. As the Finale draws near its finish, Elgar undertakes an extended and very moving reminiscence: first on the melody of the Adagio movement and then reaching back to the recitative that began the entire half-hour journey. Two terse chords re-energize the movement's fast-twitch muscle fiber, and 16 bars later the curtain comes down.
Source: Blair Johnston (allmusic.com)
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
♪ Cello Concerto in E minor, Op.85 (1919)
i. Adagio – Moderato [00:00]*
ii. Lento – Allegro molto [07:54]
iii.. Adagio [12:42]
iv. Allegro – Moderato – Allegro, ma non troppo – Poco più lento – Adagio [17:17]
Encore:
Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996)
♪ Prélude No.18, Sarabande (from Twenty-Four Preludes, Op.100) (1969) [30:54]
Sheku Kanneh-Mason, cello
Conductor: Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla
Royal Albert Hall, London, August 22, 2019
(HD 1080p)
* Start time of each movement
British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason (b. 1999) won the prestigious BBC Young Musician of the Year competition in 2016 when he was just 17 years old, performing Shostakovich's fiendish Cello Concerto No.1. The first black musician to win the competition in its 38-year history, Kanneh-Mason was born and raised in a suburb of Nottingham, England.
The third of seven siblings who all turned out to be exceptionally musically talented, he was inspired initially by his eldest sister Isata, who showed an early aptitude for the piano and was accepted at the age of eight into the Royal Academy of Music's junior department. Following in her footsteps, Sheku took up the cello at the age of six, and, aged nine, won a scholarship to also attend the Royal Academy.
He joined Chineke, Europe's first BAME (black and minority ethnic) classical orchestra, and, together with Isata and his violinist brother Braimah, formed the Kanneh-Mason Trio, appearing in 2015 on Britain's Got Talent. His experience on the show prepared him for Young Musician's relatively sedate televised segments.
After winning Young Musician, where his playing immediately drew comparisons with Jacqueline du Pré, he was signed by Decca. His 2018 debut album Inspiration featured the Shostakovich concerto along with other classical pieces and his own versions of songs by Bob Marley and Leonard Cohen. It became the first debut album by a Young Musician winner to chart, entering the U.K. pop rankings at number 18. That same spring, he and an orchestra performed for guests at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle while the couple signed the register.
Source: John D. Buchanan (allmusic.com)
More photos
See also
Edward Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor – Truls Mørk, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner (HD 1080p)
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