KABALEVSKY Cello Concerto No. 2 in C minor, op.77. SCHUMANN Cello Concerto in A minor, op. 129  Theodor Lyngstad (cel); Copenhagen Phil; Eva Ollikainen, cond  OUR RECORDINGS 8.269296 (52:39) Reviewed from a WAV download.

This engaging new release from OUR Recordings features two cello concertos from widely different eras of music, but Theodor Lyngstad, the young (b. 1993) Norwegian cellist who is the soloist on both works, sees links between them. “I find them bound together in an introspective and somewhat defiant spirit,” Lyngstad writes in the program notes for this album. “They are similar in form, with three continuous movements, written-out cadenzas and the overall development of minor to major. But even more interestingly I see a strong link in the personality and psychology of the pieces.”
The reputation of Dmitri Kabalevsky (1904-1987) has suffered over the years because he was a Russian composer who was willing to suck up to the Soviet authorities and worked in a “safe” tonal style that ruffled no feathers in the Soviet bureaucracy. Lyngstad thinks that’s unfair and defends Kabalevsky by suggesting this concerto was actually an homage to his teacher, Nikolai Myaskovsky (1881-1950). Myaskovsky was one of the composers—along with Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and even Khachaturian—denounced as “formalist” and counter-revolutionary by Soviet cultural commissar Andrei Zhdanov in 1947. Supposedly Kabalevsky was also on an early draft of that list, but he had enough official connections he was able privately to lobby the regime to be taken off it.
Myaskovsky had written a cello concerto of his own, also in C minor, in 1944, six years before his death from cancer. Kabalevsky composed this one in 1964 and had it premiered with Daniel Shafran, who had just recorded his Cello Concerto No. 1. Though Myaskovsky had been dead for 16 years when Kabalevsky composed this piece, Lyngstad writes that Kabalevsky’s Cello Concerto No. 2 “could easily be seen as a tribute to him, and perhaps even a subtle criticism or defiance of the Soviet regime.” That odd, iffy kind of language often appears in critiques of Shostakovich as well, as if Western writers can’t believe artists so intensely attuned to human suffering could have whole-heartedly endorsed the bloodthirsty regimes of Joseph Stalin and (less so) his successors.
The Kabalevsky Cello Concerto No. 2 is an unusually structured work, with a slow introduction featuring a long pizzicato passage (it’s not until 1:44 into this recording that Lyngstad is obliged to use his bow), a fast first movement (“Molto sostenuto”), an even faster second movement (“Presto marcato”), and a slow finale (“Andante con moto”). Lyngstad turns in an aggressive, almost angry performance—this is not the happy, fun Kabalevsky of the “Clown Dance” from the ballet The Comedians, his best-known work in the West—and conductor Eva Ollikeinen’s interpretation matches Lyngstad’s at every turn.
The Schumann cello concerto is also a problematic work by a composer who had to deal with impediments beyond his control, though unlike in Kabalevsky’s case they weren’t the external pressures of an uncertain political situation but the internal ones of mental illness. Schumann wrote the concerto in 1850, four years before he went insane and six years before he died in a mental institution. Schumann wrote one concerto each for piano, violin and cello. The piano concerto was the only one premiered in Schumann’s lifetime (the first movement in 1841, the whole concerto in 1845, both times with Schumann’s wife Clara as soloist). The cello concerto didn’t receive its premiere until 1860 and the violin concerto was suppressed until 1937.
When I first encountered the Schumann cello concerto, it was in high school on an album on the ultra-cheap Gramophone label, and I was immediately struck by the fact that the movement tempos were listed in German instead of the usual Italian: “Nicht zu schnell” (“Not too fast”), “Langsam” (“Slow”), and “Sehr lebhaft” (“Very lively”). I remember being surprised by that odd bit of nationalism, especially since Schumann did not have the reputation of being a particularly nationalist composer.
Though not as much of a warhorse as the piano concerto, Schumann’s cello concerto has been recorded many times. For comparisons I got out the big box of Wilhelm Furtwängler’s wartime broadcasts with the Berlin Philharmonic, which contains an incomplete performance (a snippet of the second movement and the whole of the third) with Pierre Fournier and a complete one with Tibor de Machula. Ollikeinen’s interpretation certainly seems edgier than Furtwängler’s, though the total timings are virtually identical: 22:27 for Furtwängler/de Machula and 22:47 for Lyngstad/Ollikeinen. As they were with Kabalevsky’s concerto, the two take an assertive approach to Schumann’s, pulling back on the reins a bit at 5:37 in the first movement but for the most part relentlessly pushing forward.
One minor annoyance about this release stems from the fact that I had to review it from a download instead of a physical CD. Many computer playback programs, including mine, insert split-second pauses between tracks. That makes it really annoying to listen to operas or, as with both works here, instrumental pieces whose composers wanted the movements to flow together continuously without audible breaks. This was particularly infuriating between the first and second movements of the Kabalevsky; just when I was totally into the mood of the piece, there was that awful moment of silence between the tracks to break my concentration.
Overall, this is another winner from OUR Recordings. I’ve liked everything I’ve heard from this plucky little label, and the combination of an underappreciated and a well-appreciated work, both played to the nines by a cello soloist and a conductor who aren’t afraid of grabbing the music for all it’s worth, and vividly recorded by producer Daniel Davidsen, is yet one more must-have from them. Recommended, especially if you can get past Kabalevsky’s reputation as a Soviet apparatchik and enjoy his music as the well-crafted slice of traditional tonality, with just enough dissonance to mark it as 20th century, it is. Mark Gabrish Conlan

Four stars: Remarkable performances of a lesser-known cello concerto and an acknowledged cornerstone of the repertoire