Prokofiev & Shostakovich: Cello Concertos

A thrilling album from Steven Isserlis couples the ground-breaking Prokofiev Cello Concerto from the 1930s with Shostakovich’s eruptive response to it written for Rostropovich in 1959. These seminal works mark the cello’s coming of age, enveloping its trademark rhapsodic lyricism in a newly visceral passion.

Paavo Järvi makes his Hyperion debut, conducting an ebullient Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and providing the ideal foil to Isserlis’s impassioned virtuosity.

CDA68037  65 minutes 19 seconds
‘A fascinating, I’d say unmissable project’ (Gramophone)
BBC Music Magazine
‘In his fascinating booklet note, Isserlis makes a persuasive case for preferring Prokofiev’s 1938 Concerto in E minor to its radical revision (for Rostropovich) as a Symphony-Concerto nine years late ...