Tag Archives: Cello Concerto

Hee-Young Lim: French Cello Concertos


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Sony 80358118425

Normally I don’t review a lot of popular best seller CDs or recordings of music written before 1900 (I like most all music but that I just don’t think I have much useful to say about it) but this one has the happy exception of including a 20th Century work and it is an example of truly thoughtful and creative programming.

This is the major label debut of Korean born cellist Hee-Young Lim.  She is, according to her website, currently professor of cello at Beijing Central Conservatory.  With this disc she demonstrates her facility with the technical aspects of her instrument as well as a gift for interpretation.  In addition she is known as an advocate of new music, hence the inclusion of the Milhaud Cello Concerto.

This is such a delightful disc combining two lesser heard major cello concertos with some tasty filler material.  But the real gem here is the too rarely heard Milhaud concerto of 1936.  Wow, what a great work!

The disc opens with a true classic, the Saint-Saens’ (1835-1921)  Cello Concerto No. 1 of 1872.  This is one of the great concertos for the instrument.  It is not heard with the frequency of say the Dvorak concerto but it is every bit as good and as challenging.  Ms. Lim handles this romantic gem with both ease and grace.

The second offering is a real rarity, the Cello Concerto (1877) of Èdouard Lalo (1823-1892).  It is not clear why this major work gets heard so rarely (Lalo’s work is way overdue for a reappraisal and some recordings).  It is a wonderful romantic era concerto and Lim handles it like the seasoned professional she is.

The highlight of this disc for me personally is the also rarely heard Cello Concerto No. 1 (1934) of Darius Milhaud (1892-1974).  It is one of two such works by the wonderfully prolific composer.  This work is surely recognizable for some modernist features (Lim seems quite comfortable with the more modern idiom here, a mark of a master it would seem).  Maybe a little dissonance here or there but this is basically a post-romantic work with appropriate nods toward some modernism.  The point is that it is an expressive work that deserves a place in the repertory.  Hopefully this recording will contribute to helping this music achieve its deserved place in history.  And of course there’s the eager anticipation of her recording the second Milhaud Concerto for Cello.

The disc ends with two short romantic bonbons, Jacques Offenbach’s “Les Larmes de Jacqueline” and the too rarely heard Meditation from Jules Massenet’s opera “Thais”.

Scott Yoo conducts the always competent London Symphony.  The useful and well written liner notes by James Inverne are so well researched and written I won’t complain about the microscopic typeface.  The sound is handled well by engineer Jin Choi at the iconic Abbey Road Studios in London town.

The multilingual program notes suggest that this disc looks forward to an international reputation for this fine young artist and it looks/sounds like that is what is happening here.  Let us welcome her to the international music community and look excitedly forward to hearing more from her.  Brava! Ms. Lim!

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A Major New Cello Concerto from Esa-Pekka Salonen


Perhaps this is a stroke of marketing genius or maybe some luck is involved but this recording has success written all over it. Yo-Yo Ma is without a doubt one of the finest musicians of our time. The LA Philharmonic is a world class orchestra with a world class conductor at the helm. And though this is but the first encounter by this reviewer with Salonen’s music this work suggests that his compositional skills are at a similar level. 

There is but one work on this disc, a large and very listenable cello concerto which dates from 2016. While the work is clearly modern in its style overall it leans toward romantic and impressionistic textures. Using his conductor’s mastery of the orchestra Salonen traverses territory that embraces the sound of composers such as Ives, Messiaen, Debussy, Barber, etc. Listeners will find familiar gestures but this work is not at all derivative. Rather it ultimately sounds like a complex but very connected improvisation between the soloist and the orchestra neither of whom have easy tasks (though they all play flawlessly).

The rather brief program booklet is basically a program note by the composer/conductor and it is most lucid. It might have been nice to hear as well from Mr. Ma but that is aminor criticism. This is a gorgeous piece given a characteristically powerful performance and this writer was simply enthralled from beginning to end. Now I guess it’s time to look into more of this man’s music. 

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Isang Yun: Sunrise Falling


PTC 5186-693

2018 marks the 100th birth anniversary of Korea’s best known composer, Isang Yun (1918-1995). His work has received many performances and recordings but he is not exactly a household name and live performances are still not very common.

Yun is well known for his having been kidnapped by the South Korean secret service from his home in Germany in 1967 due to alleged espionage. He remained a prisoner for two years and was subjected to torture and forced interrogations. It took intervention from the artistic community to secure his release and the petition included signatures of Igor Stravinsky, Herbert von Karajan, Luigi Dallapiccola, Hans Werner Henze, Heinz Holliger, Mauricio Kagel, Joseph Keilberth, Otto Klemperer, György Ligeti, Arne Mellnäs, Per Nørgård, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann. He was held for the better part of two years and never again returned to South Korea.

This fine 2 CD set is the first release in what this writer hopes will be a series of recordings of Yun’s major works. Dennis Russell Davies has demonstrated both knowledge and mastery of new and unusual repertoire as well as that of established works of the western canon. Despite many recordings of his work in the past those recordings were (and still are) notoriously difficult to find so this set is especially welcome.

Here Davies joins forces with the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and the talents of soloists Matt Haimovitz, Yumi Hwang-Williams, and Maki Namekawa to record a sampling of Yun’s works. In addition to the first (of three) Violin concerto (1981), the Cello concerto (1976), and a sampling of chamber works including Interludium in A (1982) for piano, Glisees (1970) for solo cello, Kontraste (1987) for solo violin, Gasa (1965) for violin and piano (probably the composer’s best known piece), and a short orchestral piece, Fanfare and Memorial (1979).

If you don’t know Yun’s work this is a fine place to start. If you already know his work you will want to hear these performances.  These are definitive and will set the standard for all that follows.

The concertos are somewhat thorny and dissonant but deeply substantive affairs that challenge both orchestra and soloist. Yun’s style draws more from modernist (think Darmstadt) than romanticism but he is capable of great beauty within that context.  In both concertos the soloists must deal with virtuosic challenges but each concerto provides a marvelous showcase for their skills.  Hearing them played by musicians of this caliber they are shown to be masterpieces of the genre.

The chamber music is similarly thorny at times but always interesting. This composer deserves to be better known and recordings like this with quality performances and recordings makes a great step in that direction. Yun was a prolific composer of pretty consistent quality so even a two disc retrospective such as this can only be a brief sampling.  The choices of what to record can’t avoid taking on a personal dimension. Intelligent choices of repertoire combined with defining performances such as these will send the listener on a quest to explore more of his work.