Composer: Henri Dutilleux, Mieczyslaw Weinberg
Performer: Edgar Moreau
Orchestra: WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln
Conductor: Andris Poga
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Erato
Catalogue: 5419748933
Release: 2023
Size: 1.01 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
Weinberg: Cello Concerto in D Minor, Op. 43
01. I. Adagio
02. II. Moderato
03. III. Allegro – Cadenza
04. IV. Allegro
Dutilleux: Tout un monde lointain (Concerto for cello and orchestra)
05. I. Énigme. Très libre et flexible
06. II. Regard. Extrêmement calme
07. III. Houles. Large et ample
08. IV. Miroirs. Lent et extatique
09. V. Hymne. Allegro
The two works for cello and orchestra here, the Cello Concerto in C minor, Op. 43, of Mieczyslaw Weinberg and Tout un monde lointain for cello and orchestra by Henri Dutilleux, are hardly common on concert programs; perhaps the Dutilleux, taking the Debussy-Ravel language into serialist territory, is a bit better known. They are quite different, but they have a major trait in common: both were composed for the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Knowing this makes the two works snap into focus, so to speak; each has the kind of noble melody line that Rostropovich brought to mind, and cellist Edgar Moreau achieves a reasonable facsimile of the style. The Weinberg concerto might be termed a real find, departing considerably from the composer’s general Shostakovich inspiration. It is something of a sinfonia concertante, with the solo cello emerging in unexpected ways from other solo lines (sample the second and fourth movements). The Dutilleux work has a melancholy that the serialist method cannot squash, and Moreau gets lively support from the underrated WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln under conductor Andris Poga. This is a release that will fill spaces on many shelves or hard drives, and it continues to mark the ascent of Weinberg into the general repertory.
Cellist Edgar Moreau, with the WDR Sinfonieorchester and conductor Andris Poga, performs two concertante works from the mid-20th century: Mieczysław Weinberg’s Concerto in C minor (1956), and Henri Dutilleux’s Tout un monde lointain … (1970). Both were premiered by the great Mstislav Rostropovich, which creates a special link with Moreau: in 2014 in Paris, he won the Young Soloist Prize in the Rostropovich Cello Competition. In recent years, interest has grown in the music of the Polish-born Jewish composer Mieczysław Weinberg, who was mentored by Shostakovich. The title Tout un monde lointain … evokes a distant world, and Dutilleux’s five-movement work does indeed take us to a very different place from Weinberg’s, drawing inspiration from the sensuous poems of Charles Baudelaire. Praising Edgar Moreau’s last Erato album, Transmission, Gramophone wrote: “His tone is beautiful, his phrasing rapt, and the intensity of his delivery is magnified in the immediacy of his presence in the sound picture.”