Dvořák: Cello Concerto / Tchaikovsky: Rococo Variations

In this recording, the cellist is Mstislav Rostropovich, the orchestra is the Berlin Philharmonic, and the conductor is Herbert von Karajan.

## Dvořák: Cello Concerto

The Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, B. 191, is the last solo concerto by Antonín Dvořák. It was written in 1894 for his friend, the cellist Hanuš Wihan, but was premiered in London on March 19, 1896, by the English cellist Leo Stern.

### Instrumentation

The piece is scored for the following instruments: 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle (3rd movement only), and strings.

### Movements

The movements are named as follows:

1. Allegro
2. Adagio ma non troppo
3. Finale. Allegro moderato

## Tchaikovsky: Rococo Variations

The Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33, for cello and orchestra was the closest Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ever came to writing a full concerto for cello and orchestra. The style was inspired by Mozart, Tchaikovsky's role model, and makes it clear that Tchaikovsky admired the Classical style very much. However, the Theme is not Rococo in origin, but actually an original theme in the Rococo style. Tchaikovsky wrote this piece for and with the help of Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, a German cellist and fellow-professor at the Moscow Conservatory. Fitzenhagen gave the premiere in Moscow on November 30, 1877, with Nikolai Rubinstein conducting. This was perhaps the only hearing of the Variations as Tchaikovsky wrote the piece, until 1941, when it was played in Moscow without Fitzenhagen's by-then-standard emendations.

### Instrumentation

The piece is scored for the following instruments: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns and strings.

### Movements

The movements are named as follows:

* Moderato quasi Andante
* Tema. Moderato semplice
* Variazione I. Tempo del Tema
* Variazione II. Tempo del Tema
* Variazione III. Andante sostenuto
* Variazione IV. Andante grazioso
* Variazione V. Allegro moderato
* Variazione VI. Andante
* Variazione VII. Allegro vivo

## Program Note - A recording becomes a political event

The words "dialogue" and "exchange" were all the more often heard in Berlin at the time of Rostropovich's visit because the recording project inevitably carried political freight. The Baku-born cellist and conductor (and teacher at the Moscow and Leningrad conservatories to boot) never made a secret of his opposition to his country's political masters. A friend of the great "Soviet" composers of the century, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and also of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, he did not hesitate to express his uncomfortable opinions in public. He did so fearlessly and, of course, trusting to the official indulgence allowed to the very greatest Soviet musicians at the highest levels of the nomenklatura. But at the end of the 1960s Rostropovich became more and more tightly entangled in a net of hostility and calumny. He left the USSR in 1974 and lost his citizenship in 1978.

We need to remember that climate of uncertainty, ferment and, too, inextinguishable hopes for peace to appreciate the signals sent out by those Berlin performances of Dvořák and Tchaikovsky. The music here was more than artistic self-expression, it was an opportunity to tell the truth and rise above the slough of human and international discord, to hold out the hand of friendship to a neighbour who was officially an enemy of your own country. This same intention played a role in other projects of that period in history, such as Herbert von Karajan's two recordings of Tchaikovsky's B flat minor Concerto, with Sviatoslav Richter and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and with Lazar Berman and the Berlin Philharmonic. There, as here, it was a matter of winks and nudges, of a will to try at least to achieve in and through music the agreement and unity that the "systems" somehow prevented in other contexts.

Dvořák's Cello Concerto and Tchaikovsky's characterful and charming, balletic and balladeering "Rococo" Variations (a musical example, if you like, of creative appropriation of the past) might have been written for Rostropovich, for his big sympathetic heart and the warm resonance of his instrument and his playing. The dedication and the mastery have given rise to a symbiotic union such that it is scarcely possible to say whether the performer plays the instrument or the instrument plays the performer.

*Peter Cossé*

*(Translation: Mary Whittall)*

## Reviews

It really was a milestone in the history of Dvořák performance and no less of one in the annals of musical partnership - including the multiple personality of an orchestra. I remember the announcement - I was in my last years at school - and every aspect of the project fuelled conversation and a curiosity which far outdid any other recording of the turbulent '60s. Even areas of the media which normally never touched "classical music" ran the story: Mstislav Rostropovich would be playing Dvořák's Cello Concerto in Berlin - in the divided, vulnerable, troubled Berlin of the Cold War - under the baton of Herbert von Karajan. And as if a concert performance was not already an event of the greatest significance, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Rostropovich and Herbert von Karajan would also be making a recording of the work, together with Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme. It really happened. We heard the incandescent brilliance of Rostropovich, a virtuoso of the emotions as well as the cello; we saw the peerless powers of coordination and motivation of the world-renowned conductor; and, not least, we appreciated the animation and colour which the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra brought to every performance of a concerto, and which makes their recordings documents of an exchange of ideas and mutually stimulating dialogue with every soloist.

*Peter Cossé*

## Links

For the playlist of the album, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1UkK5jFALY&list=OLAK5uy\_lCdlQPa3mV7Z\_VJN3Dgf1xqaNOz1Eo1Yw

For more details on the album, click here: https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/dvoak-cello-concerto-rostropovich-1725

For the official Deutsche Grammophon website, click here: https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en

## Notes

* Art Direction - Hartmut Pfeiffer
* Cellist - Mstislav Rostropovich
* Composers - Antonín Dvořák, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
* Conductor - Herbert von Karajan
* Engineer - Günter Hermanns
* Executive-Producer - Otto Gerdes
* Liner Notes - Mary Whittall, Peter Cossé, Hélène Chen-Ménissier, Gabriele Cervone
* Orchestra - Berlin Philharmonic
* Producer - Hans Weber
* Sound - Stereo
* Recording date - September 1968
* Recording venue - Berlin, Jesus-Christus-Kirche
* Total duration - 60'21