BBC Legends 3: Mstislav Rostropovich

The sixteenth CD in the latest BBC Legends release is devoted to Mstislav Rostropovich performing with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) in the Royal Festival Hall. Rostropovich is best known as a virtuoso cellist; but, as his career advanced, he also performed as a conductor. His BBC Legends CD presents him in both capacities over the course of three concertos.

The album begins with a performance that took place on July 1, 1965, at which he exercised both talents. From the soloist’s chair he led a performance of Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken VIIb/1 cello concerto in C major. For the remaining two concertos, he passed the baton (literally) to Gennady Rozhdestvensky. The second concerto on the album is Camille Saint-Saëns’ Opus 33 (first) in A minor, recorded on July 7 of the same month. The remaining selection was recorded earlier on July 5, Edward Elgar’s Opus 85 concerto in E minor.

The Haydn concerto was a recent arrival to the cello repertoire, since the score was only discovered in 1961. Prior to that year concert goers and record collectors had assumed that Haydn had written only one concerto. The concerto received its twentieth-century premiere on May 19, 1962, when Charles Mackerras conducted the Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra with Miloš Sádlo as the cello soloist. After that it became “open season;” and it is hard to find a major virtuoso cellist that has not performed the concerto. Nevertheless, Rostropovich’s “double duty” with the LSO is definitely an engaging account of the Haydn concerto, making this performance one of the more memorable offerings in the entire box set.

The subsequent coupling of Saint-Saëns and Elgar is also likely to appeal to the attentive listener. The two composers were contemporaries, but their approaches to composition differ markedly. Both concertos are popular in the symphony orchestra repertoire. My own personal bias lies with the Elgar, but I always seem to find engaging aspects of the Saint-Saëns concerto whenever I have a chance to listen to a cellist that clearly appreciates the music! However, what interests me is that the Saint-Saëns concerto shows up on both the Deutsche Grammophon and EMI Rostropovich anthologies (and twice for EMI); but neither set includes the Elgar. So it seems appropriate to acknowledge that the BBC has provided a valuable service for those of us that enjoy that Elgar offering! (For the record, as they say, Amazon.com has a Web page for those interested to purchasing this particular CD as a single!)