Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Lutoslawski: Cello Concertos

Classic and modern cello masterworks from Schumann to Lutoslawski, performed by cellist Andrzej Bauer. Andrzej Bauer is professor at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw and the Feliks Nowowiejski Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz, where he is in charge of cello classes. The cello is the instrument perhaps most strongly associated in the general awareness with romantic music. Regarded as the closest in its sound to the human voice, it can sing quite beautifully, enchanting the listener with its timbre and conveying a range of human emotions. This disc prepared by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute could well stimulate reflection on this subject, as it contains two works by giants of romantic music, Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129 and Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33 for cello and orchestra, as well as the Cello Concerto by the greatest Polish composer of the second half of the twentieth century, Witold Lutoslawski. Andrzeij Bauer says of this new recording:- “My fascination with masterworks of the Romantic cello literature dates from a time when I was not entirely able to play them. I would listen endlessly to the records available in the 70s and record radio programmes onto spools of tape. The Concerto for Cello and Orchestra by Witold Lutoslawski is for me the most important masterwork for cello and orchestra of the twentieth century. I had the good fortune to perform the Concerto several times under the composer’s baton and enjoyed many conversations with the Maestro. The culmination of my contacts with Witold Lutoslawski, and perhaps the most important concert experience of my life, was a performance with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra at its marvellous Gasteig venue.”