Jacqueline du Pré & Mstislav Rostropovich: Schumann & Dvořák Cello Concertos (Richard Itter Collection)

MP3 Album:

This previously unreleased live recording of Jacqueline du Pré playing the Schumann Cello Concerto is her first public performance of the work, given in the Royal Festival Hall on 12 December 1962 with Jean Martinon conducting the BBCSO. She had worked intensively on the concerto with Paul Tortelier in Paris prior to this concert. When Du Pré studied the Schumann with Mstislav Rostropovich at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1966, he exclaimed, ‘This is the most perfect Schumann I have ever heard’. The 1962 live performance of the Dvořák Cello Concerto by Rostropovich has also not been released before. He is partnered by Carlo Maria Giulini, who went on to to make a studio recording of the same concerto with him in 1977. The Times critic described this Edinburgh Festival performance as an ‘exciting’ and ‘emotionally supercharged interpretation’ with Giulini’s reading ‘full of finely wrought points of detail’. The attractive bonus features Rostropovich and his wife Galina Vishnevskaya in the Ária from Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras.

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This release has been sourced from the Richard Itter archive. The collection is very important for collectors because it has never been released before onto the market. This important live recording of Jacqueline du Pre playing the Schumann Cello Concerto is her first public performance of the work, given in the Royal Festival Hall on 12th December 1962 with Jean Martinon conducting the BBCSO. She worked intensively on the concerto with Paul Tortelier in Paris prior to this concert and learnt his virtuosic cadenza for her earlier performances of the Schumann. When du Pre studied the Schumann intensively with Rostropovich at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1966, he exclaimed ‘This is the most perfect Schumann I have ever heard’. The 1962 live performance of the Dvorak Cello Concerto by Mstislav Rostropovich has not been released before and is interesting because here he is partnered by Carlo Maria Giulini, who went onto to make a studio recording of the same concerto some 15 years later. The bonus comes from a song recital given in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh on 23 August 1962, where Rostropovich is heard with his wife Galina Vishnevskaya and seven cellos from the LSO in the Aria from Villa Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras, one of her warhorses and a great hit on this occasion. This performance has never been released before.

Schumann Cello Concerto in A minor, op.129
Jacqueline du Pré cello
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Jean Martinon

Antonín Dvořák Cello Concerto in B minor, op.104
Mstislav Rostropovich cello
Philharmonia Orchestra
Carlo Maria Giulini

Heiter Villa-Lobos
Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 – Ária
Galina Vishnevskaya soprano
Mstislav Rostropovich cello
7 cellos from the London Symphony Orchestra