Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No.1, Han-Na Chang

Several recent concerto projects, notably Harmonia Mundi’s excellent Dvořák series, have coupled a concerto with a major chamber work. In 2003, the Korean cellist Han-Na Chang recorded a superb pairing of Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto and the Cello Sonata for EMI, with Antonio Pappano and the LSO. She has followed this with an equally collectable Shostakovich CD, coupling the First Cello Concerto with the Cello Sonata.

Any new recordings of the First Cello Concerto are likely to be put in the shade by Rostropovich’s electrifying 1959 recording, made a few weeks after the première while on tour in America (with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra). Han-Na Chang can’t match Rostropovich’s superhuman power, probably no cellist in history could, but she is enormously impressive, and in no sense out-muscled by Pappano’s full-on accompaniment. Like Rostropovich, with whom she studied (and indeed recorded the Rococo Variations with, at the age of 13!), Chang takes a very serious view of this piece. Although Shostakovich described the opening movement as having the character of a “jocular march”, in Chang’s hands it sounds edgy and obsessive. Whether or not you agree with Joachim Braun’s view that the concerto belongs to a “dissident” group of works, centred around the song-cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry, it’s clear from this performance that desperation is always close to the surface of the music. The LSO, hugely experienced in this repertoire, produce playing of walloping impact.

Antonio Pappano joins Chang as accompanist in the 1934 Cello Sonata, a beautiful and entirely characteristic piece. Once again Chang is superb, playing with tremendous bite in the Mahlerian scherzo, and she and Pappano have a lot of fun with the Keystone Kops music in the finale. Full, punchy sound and good liner notes by Eric Roseberry. Not to be missed!