Dvorak Cello Concerto

  Some recordings imprint us with impressions of a piece that any other interpretation just doesn’t sound right, particularly if we have listened to that recording a bunch prior to hearing others.  In this work I had a recording by Maurice Gendron, a French Cellist known more as a teacher than a recording artist, and Haitink with the LPO, that I played the proverbial grooves off 40 years ago.

  The piece itself is one of Dvorak’s greatest.  He was a superb melodist..  Brahms once said that other Composers could make a career using the chips that flew off his workbench. However a lot of his works can sound formulaic, as he tries to make those gorgeous tunes fill up a structure they can’t support.  When he was inspired however, he soared, and this Concerto is one of his peaks.  Written after several years in America when he was pining to be home with his family, he also learned that his sister in law, who was his first love and with whom he stayed close after his own marriage, had died.  He incorporates some songs that he had written for her in the piece, and the juxtaposition of the symphonic scope of the work with the interludes of aching nostalgia is irresistible.

  It was years before I heard another recording and they all sounded somewhat slick in comparison.  They just don’t seem to be inside the work as my favorite.  Is this for real or was I so shaped by my initial impression.

  Lately I’ve been listening to Alissa Weilerstein with Jiri Behlolavak (who died soon after the recording) and the Czech PO.  I finally have a recording that has supplanted the long term favorite.  I still prefer some of the rubato in Gendron/Haitink, but Weilerstein still dishes the emotion but more as a Polka then a Waltz.  And her tone is golden.  She floats a pianissimo at the end that is to die for