Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Pfitzner: Cello Concertos (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Pfitzner: Cello Concertos (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:28 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Hyperion’s Romantic Cello Concerto series continues to bring new works into a repertoire currently dominated by Dvořák and Elgar. Alban Gerhardt performs the three concertos by Hans Pfitzner, a composer remembered most for his opera Palestrina.

Pfitzner’s early Cello Concerto in A minor, Op posth., was scorned by his teachers (although liked by the composer himself) and the manuscript disappeared during his lifetime. It was first performed in public on 18 February 1977 and published the following year. His Cello Concerto in G major, Op 42, was written almost half a century later. Completed in 1935, this richly melodic single span was composed for the cellist Gaspar Cassadó (1897–1966), one of the finest cellists of his generation. This beautifully constructed concerto derives its material from the lyrical cello solo (heard over a quiet timpani roll) at the very start of the work. The orchestration is deft and often delicate, never submerging the solo instrument, but full of attractive surprises, not least the tumbling trumpet fanfares that introduce the first of the faster sections. The Cello Concerto in A minor, Op 52, is dedicated to Ludwig Hoelscher (1907–1996), a pupil of two giants of German cello-playing: Hugo Becker and Julius Klengel. It was completed in 1943 and published in 1944. Also included is a Duo for violin, cello and small orchestra.

Though billed as the fourth volume of Hyperion’s ‘The Romantic Cello Concerto’, most of the music on this disc was written during the 1930s and 40s.

Hans Pfitzner, notoriously, was a Nazi-sympathising conservative. But that doesn’t mean he was simply writing 19th-century music in the middle of the 20th century. The earliest and most fascinating composition here, a cello concerto dating from 1889 when he was a 19-year-old student, starts like a pious exercise in Schumannesque rumination but takes in startling and richly orchestrated outbursts evoking Wagner’s Venusberg; a reminder that Pfitzner’s finest hours would be in the opera house, with the ‘musical legend’ Palestrina (1912-15), and that he would eventually offer the kind of quirky angles on full-blown Romanticism that were only possible in retrospect.

When he returned to the cello concerto genre in 1935 it was with music of unusual concision, making his typically unsettling mixture of restraint and flamboyance even more effective than usual. The Duo for violin, cello and small orchestra (1937) is also concise but still manages to lapse into the kind of effusive drifting around unmemorable themes that is Pfitzner’s Achilles heel. The last concerto, from 1943, has a few similar episodes but is overall more characterful and eventful, its four short movements conveying an uneasy darkness of tone that is understandable, given the year of composition.

The Hyperion team provide a no less characterful recording, close to the music’s generally expansive sonorities without obscuring its many distinctive details.
Alban Gerhardt is an unfailingly charismatic soloist, finding a sense of purpose where others might lapse into aimlessness, and the orchestral support is first-rate. –Arnold Whittall, Gramophone

Tracklist:

01. Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Cello Concerto in A minor, Op posth. – 1: Andante molto sostenuto – Allegro (10:25)
02. Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Cello Concerto in A minor, Op posth. – 2: Adagio molto tranquillo (12:51)
03. Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Cello Concerto in A minor, Op 52 – 1: Ruhig (07:36)
04. Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Cello Concerto in A minor, Op 52 – 2: Nicht zu schnell (02:59)
05. Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Cello Concerto in A minor, Op 52 – 3: Feierlich (02:49)
06. Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Cello Concerto in A minor, Op 52 – 4: Allegretto (04:32)
07. Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Cello Concerto in G major, Op 42 – 1: Ziemlich ruhig, schwebend – (03:29)
08. Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Cello Concerto in G major, Op 42 – 2: Sehr langsam – Beschleunigt – Allegro – (03:58)
09. Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Cello Concerto in G major, Op 42 – 3: Ruhiges Anfangstempo – (02:00)
10. Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Cello Concerto in G major, Op 42 – 4: A tempo – (01:51)
11. Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Cello Concerto in G major, Op 42 – 5: Langsamer a tempo (03:03)
12. Alban Gerhardt, Gergana Gergova, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Duo, Op 43 – 1: Allegro moderato – (05:38)
13. Alban Gerhardt, Gergana Gergova, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Duo, Op 43 – 2: Moderato – (01:50)
14. Alban Gerhardt, Gergana Gergova, Sebastian Weigle, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin – Duo, Op 43 – 3: Ganze Takte (04:22)

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