Sinfoniekonzert04

It was one of the comebacks of the musical year when the Norwegian cellist Truls Mørk ended his 18-month absence from the concert stage due to illness in 2011. The same year he received the ECHO Classic Award as instrumentalist of the year – Mørk won his public back at a prestissimo tempo, so to speak. When he makes his debut with the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne in Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, it will undoubtedly be because the former pupil of Heinrich Schiff has ‘a transparent, floating, unpressured sound with no intonation problems that is ideal for the dim, dark colours of Shostakovian depression’ (Frankfurter Rundschau).
Shostakovich’s opus 107, dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, was a liberating response of sorts to the rigid cultural policy of Stalinism – an audible step in the search for new musical directions, which similarly preoccupied César Franck during the 1880s. Even experts initially disapproved of his Symphony in D minor in those days. ‘Your Franck’s music may be whatever you please, but it will certainly never be a symphony,’ a concertgoer indignantly informed composer Vincent d’Indy after the premiere when asked about his opinion of the work. Today it is considered a landmark of the genre. Hungarian conductor Gilbert Varga, acclaimed throughout the world for his electrifying podium style, will appropriately interpret these two epochal ‘escape attempts’.