Rostrpovich performs Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto writeno FOR HIM and dedicated to HIM! He learned and MEMORIZED in just three days, and then came to Shostakovich's dacha to play it!
Same story with Dutilleux's "Tout un monde lointain". Rostropovitch compensated his lack of time to learn new repertoire (he has an insane schedule) by an insane capacity to ingest it.
I was present at the Kennedy Center on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Shostakovich, when Rostropovich played this. When people speak of the privilege of being present, I know what is meant. It was an unforgettable experience, one that I wished would never end.
It's unbelievable that we can access such a historic performance with such little effort. Rostropovich is arguably the most influential cellist ever, and we get to see his brilliant, LIVE interpretation of Shostakovich's 1st cello concerto at hardly any cost. While I love that so many people have the opportunity to see this, it almost feels too good for a platform like youtube.
I love these historical recordings...it puts us modern listeners right there in the audience. And this piece...WOW...the way Shostakovitch treats the cello almost like a percussion instrument is just amazing. Phenomenal piece.
I am an aging Australian who like many others of us love Shostakovich, Prokofiev etc. When I found this on RU-vid, played by Rostropovich for Shostakovich, conducted by my favourite conductor when I was a young student at university many years ago, I was ecstatic! I had goosebumps and teared up with the beautiful, sad experience of this magical performance of a great work of art! I loathe Stalin for the way he treated Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Katchaturian, three of the greatest 20th century composers. Thank you so much for this unforgettable piece of beautifully filmed black and white record of one of the great musical creations of the 20th century.
Absolutely electrifying! No wonder DDS loved Slava so much! This performance makes the other versions I've heard so far on utub seem kind of pathetic (though I certainly welcome all interpretations of this great piece). Admiration & gratitude to Sir Charles Groves & the London Symphony Orchestra musicians - and the recordists from EMI. I'm gonna take a long break before listening to any other music.
“International Concert Hall” (broadcast on 16 Dec 61) (25 Nov?) 1961 VIDEO BBC Television Centre Mstislav Rostropovich (cello), Barry Tuckwell (horn), Charles Groves led by Hugh Maguire
Don't get dismotivated, you're still young, you can easily have enought time of training to become a great cellist! My case is much more worrisome, I started violin classes when I was 22, today I'm 24! And still I train everyday to have my chance in the professional world as a musician. I believe when you love what you do, it will definitely be worth for you in your life.
Both soloist and orchestra need to be as tight as possible. No wishy-washy Romanticism here! This concerto will highlight any small mistake and miscalculation, especially with the very dry acoustic of this performance with all the curtains absorbing the sound! Lutoslawski also wrote a Concerto for him. I urge you to listen.
Es una expresión cultural, clasicamente Soviética, llena de fuerza y profundidad, es mucho lo que se ha perdido con la masacre cometida contra la URSS, los ejemplos sobran como lo es este tipo de proyectos, el hegemonismo occidental redunda en la pobreza de la humanidad.
Esto no es soviético, es ruso. Ahí están Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky y demás que no tienen nada que ver con el socialismo. Y eso que llamas hegemonismo (sic) occidental, generó a Bach, Beethoven y otras docenas de genios. A menos que te refieras a Estados Unidos como occidente, en términos trasnochados de la guerra fría.
Rostropovich comes off as serenely in command. Yo Yo Ma, also a great cellist to be sure, but he gives the impression of being in a titanic struggle with his instrument.
For me not. And I love them both as Musicians. Not only super cellist - it seems they grow on trees these days... But they are quite generic, no personality. Truls Moerk is wonderful.
From Wikipedia..."Shostakovich wrote [Concerto # 1] for his friend Mtislav Rostropovich, who committed it to memory in 4 days and gave the premiere on Oct.4, 1959." This tallies approximately with the late 50's "early TV" look of this performance, although it was obviously filmed , as video-tape had not yet been invented. Haven't a clue regarding the conductor---he certainly isn't one of the Big 5 (Ormandy, Reiner, Munch, Szell and Bernstein) of the period...any help???
Elliot Rothenberg I recommend the 1969 live recording of du Pre playing the Dvorak with Sir Charles Groves conducting. A very powerful interpretation indeed (the cello is a little hard to hear due to acoustics of the Royal Albert Hall, but still great anyway).
С ума сойти, все каменты на английском. Хотя, по стилю, похоже, что некоторые соотечественники. Проклятый коронавирус, в Волгоград никто не приезжает с концертами.
Can we just take some time to acknowledge the excellent, simple camera work and editing. Whoever was in charge knew the score so well, and didn't try any funny business..
Given how usually the sound recordings were saved but the visuals got trashed or recycled soon after any broadcasts, even if this thing was intended to be saved, they must’ve just banked on making damned sure they didn’t miss one lick of a bow or press of a valve when it emphasizes the right movement. It’s pretty much old school flawless stagecraft brought to the film/television medium, like how Rod Serling would do his teleplays for “Twilight Zone.”
I love Shostakovich since I was a teenager - the music is so uneasy, melancholic, intense and thrillingly austere, but with a dynamism that never wavers.
He was the only Russian composer I didn’t like, but then I read the book Symphony for the City of the Dead, about him, and began to understand his music and where he was coming from. I adore him now. He was such a great human being.
In Oct. 1959, when I was 17, we attended a Philadelphia Orchestra Youth Concert, conducted by Ormandy. It was on a Monday. The previous Friday, Rostropovich had done the US premier of this concerto, in the same hall. He had spent the weekend in his hotel nursing a cold, but when he heard that Ormandy was doing a youth concert, he expressed his liking for young audiences, asked if he could play. Ormandy said yes, and so we got to see this. We were a bunch of preppies, mostly who knew little of music, but we had the feeling that we had seen something very special and cheered wildly at the end. I have been a Rostropovich fanatic ever since.
That horn just rips through those lines in the first movement, doesn't it? If any of you've ever picked up a horn, you know how damned hard that is. Also props to the piccolo player for not pissing me off.
Шостакович - гений! А ведь его музыку запрещали в России. Критики говорили, что это не музыка а "набор звуков", но не смотря на непонииание со строны критиков Шостакович стал одним из самый великих русских композиторов!!!
I was in the audience when Rostropovich gave the western premiere of this concerto with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in about 1959 (I think). Almost as exciting as Rostropovich's performance, was the big parade of top Soviet and American composers led, of course by Shostakovich, walking on stage. You can imagine the thrill for the audience of hearing those opening notes for the very first time!
I heard Rostropovich several times during his best performing years. He was absolutely unbelievably great. To hear him live at that time in London was incredible. I never heard another cellist like him.
What about Yo Yo Ma? His perform of this cello concert is also great. In fact, I feel it better (with all the respect that I deserve to master Rostropovich).
@@thamesweb “International Concert Hall” (broadcast on 16 Dec 61) (25 Nov?) 1961 VIDEO BBC Television Centre Mstislav Rostropovich (cello), Barry Tuckwell (horn), Charles Groves led by Hugh Maguire SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Concerto No.1 in E flat Op.107 DVD video: (Mar03) E.M.I. DVA49 0120.9.
Thanks a million!!! This is a wonderful recording. The cameras, the rhythm, the tensions! Shostakovich's concerto is captivating me every time. Slowly being bewitched!
You are so right. I was lucky enough to attend ALL his series of nine concerts at Festival Hall in 1965. A treasured memory, but at least we have the recordings, and this one is superb.
So great. The 2nd movement bleak, as Shostakovich wanted, not ponderously slow and overwrought with huge and constant romantic style vibrato, as most cellist play it. Also Rostropovich maintains the level of sound throughout each bow, be it frog to tip or vice versa, like no other, without the seasick swells. Slava- who will ever be your equal?
When I was a kid learning cello my mom plucked the Everest 3342 recording of this and the Dvorak concerto out of a sale bin at a record store. I found both sides mesmerizing and played them continually, and then I'd corral all the kids in my section and make them listen to 15:00 until the clarinet came in (in my recording, it was slightly sharp, and all I could imagine was the player dropping their jaw trying to make pitch!). I adore this concerto. Rostropovich was so good to Shostakovich...like a son to him in a way, just very devoted. The second concerto is completely different. In places it sounds like a circus. However, in Soviet Russia one had to maneuver artistically in order to avoid running afoul of the authorities and being sent to Siberia or worse. Shostakovich ruined his health and happiness trying not to be arrested, despite being the greatest Soviet (or, for that matter, Russian) composer of all time...even including Stravinsky, who I really dig.
I too was at the US premier at the Academy of Music sitting in the Pit.The Afternoon of the concert Rostropovich visited Settlement Music School in South Philly and he grabbed me(Paul Weinberg) and Judy Dorph(we were both studying Cello with Joseph Druian at Settlement) for a photo. Unfortunately, the photo didn't come out). One other thing about Rostropovich. He was very much a man who detested the Soviet regime and was treated shabbily by it-reduced to playing the cello on a tour boat in the Caspian Sea, before he left Russia for the US. A great cellist, musician and human being.
my friend who’s a senior at my school is playing this tomorrow (as the cello soloist) for our local youth orchestra which i am also a part of, albeit in a lower ensemble. unfortunately i’m not able to go to his performance, but I do wish him the best luck in performing such a prestigious piece!
If the last note of the cadenza isn't a scream of desparation I don't know what is. Phenomenal concerto, phenomenal performance. Sir Charles Groves, LSO (leader Hugh Maguire), BBC Studios recording
@@mikemurray2027 Brilliant argument. I hadn't considered that. Maybe pick up a book about the life of musicians and artists in the USSR. Shostakovich specifically. They lived in constant fear. Many just dissapeared. Rostropovich fled to America in the 70s and was banned from returning to his home country. Musicians in the Soviet bloc were banned from participating in events he was involved in. You don't know what you're talking about
There has never been another cellist like Rostropovich. I heard him in London live during his best playing years. He was unbelievably great. He was a true cellist genius.
Есть режим. Есть человек, страдающий от этого режима, человек несогласный с ним, в конце концов восстающий против этого зла.... Дмитрий Шостакович воплотил циклично повторяющееся, из столетия в столетие, страдание русского народа. К сожалению, эта музыка ВСЕГДА актуальна, до боли близка русскому человеку.
He was an incredibly great cellist. I heard him during his best years in London a number of times. During those years he was super human. His amazing playing affected my life as a cellist. I have never heard anyone quite like that. Of course there were always fantastic cellists out there.
Rostro himself said that only Jackie Du Pre was his equal. Here's the doomed yet immortal Jackie playing her beloved Elgar cello concerto: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OPhkZW_jwc0.html
Rostropovich fought for art without borders, freedom of speech, and democratic values, resulting in harassment from the Soviet regime. An early example was in 1948, when he was a student at the Moscow Conservatory. In response to the 10 February 1948 decree on so-called 'formalist' composers, his teacher Dmitri Shostakovich was dismissed from his professorships in Leningrad and Moscow; the 21-year-old Rostropovich quit the conservatory, dropping out in protest. Rostropovitch also smuggled to the West the manuscript of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13, emphasizing Soviet indifference to the Babi Yar massacre.
Favorite part at 22:26 when he glances over at conductor because he knows exactly whcih note the orchestra is supposed to start, then a few seconds later hits that high note and pulls bow back with masterful force.
Even 32 years after the tragic fall of the Soviet Union, the cultural war - and the class struggle - remain ongoing. Shall the west let sleeping dogs lie? No. Apparently the profit incentive is so strong amongst liberals that dystopian publishing conglomerates do takedown requests on the cultural heritage of the Soviet Union - on the intellectual properties of one member of the Bolshevik party - a deeply humanistic and proletarian person - who believed that all good things, and art especially, are the common property of all mankind: Dmitri Shostakovich
Среди музыкантов тех времён, на мой взгляд, самым совершенным был Растрапович! Сам Шостакович мог делать замечания скрипачу Ойстраху, когда тот играл его музыку. А, вот, Растраповичу никогда не делал.
I saw this man live in Vancouver, B.C. His playing was so spell binding I was transported to an understanding of what great artistry is. Absolutely breathtaking!
It takes practice. I thought like that at first but then my teacher restored my confidence. I know this sounds stale, but practice makes perfect. Keep working at it! I'm also a 15 year old cellist with similar aspirations.
With all due respect to Mr. Rostropovich, who was insanely talended, I can't help but think he looks like Dr. Eggman from Sonic with his long arms. More seriously, this is a beautiful performance, and extremely well recorded for the time.
Yeah dude, i'm a 17 year old cellist and I just started this. It just takes alot of work and you need to be committed to playing, and that commitment will take you places you'd never have dreamed of going. I started to get my shit together after I played the Saint Saens concerto when I was 16, and then I just kept going and going and now i'm here. Just saying, don't skip out on etudes. Popper and Piatti really helped me with technique.
@@emerald6597 coming from someone who also is playing a *fun* game of catch-up, if you have a good teacher put enough dedication into it, and want it desperately enough, you can catch up and even outplay kids your age :)
I feel prvileged to have heard him from 1975 until 1993 in various programmes around europe. Certainly a most fascinating musician and the most influential cellist of the 2nd half of the 20th century. Thank you,slava
