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Dmitri Shostakovich at the world premiere of the second cello concerto (opus 126)
composed for Mstislav Rostropovich.
Last month, in writing about "the concert experience through recordings," I singled out the world premiere of Sergei Prokoviev'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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