This isn’t the first time these concertos
have been conjoined. Yo-Yo Ma recorded them in New York with
Kurt Masur (Sony Classical SK67173) nearly fifteen years
ago. There was also a much less heralded disc on Guild GMCD
7235 played by James Kreger and the Philharmonia Orchestra
under Djong Victorin Yu, a disc that hit the shops back in
2002. The reason for placing both concertos alongside each
other is the putatively influential nature of the Herbert
on the Dvořák. That said, what must have stimulated
the Czech composer - who had already abandoned an early effort
and was not therefore exactly unaware of the potential -
was Herbert’s clever orchestration and the way he allowed
the cello to exploit registers to enable it to sing and to
be heard; that and the chance for reflective soliloquies
that Herbert offers the soloist, especially in the first
movement.
Gautier Capuçon has been busy in the studios of late and he joins the Frankfurt
Radio Symphony Orchestra and Paavo Järvi for performances made in May
2008. My main concern in this Frankfurt recording of the
Dvořák centres on the first movement which is subject
to moments of stasis that do nothing for the musical architecture
of the work. They’re lovely in themselves but amount to a
full stop. The clarinet and flute themes therefore dawdle
and when the cello enters – with a rather nasal tone – Capuçon makes deliberately heavy weather of his opening statements.
Dynamics and rubati are sometimes extreme and the whole thing
sounds somewhat ponderous – in tempo relationship terms this
is very similar to Rostropovich/Giulini recording. I don’t
especially like his climactic glissando or Capuçon’s over-emoted and throbbing vibrato when
he wants to make expressive points – hear his mini groans
if you doubt his commitment, which I don’t at all; just the
result.
The slow movement is better though there’s
an ungainly slide at around the two-minute mark. The recording
doesn’t quite manage to correlate the wind lines so that
the dialogues between cello and wind sound rather loose and
undefined. But the playing here is an improvement, most certainly,
even if the greater depths of the music remain unplumbed.
More over-finicky dynamics return for the finale. And after
all the hammer dished out earlier the reminiscence of the
second movement comes without any great involving or moving
power. I remained impassive even in the face of the fine
musicianship on show.
Herbert’s Concerto is a bluff but imaginative
three movement one. Registrations are adeptly chosen and
as already noted he allows the soloist considerable space
for declamation and whispered confidences. Wind solos in
the central movement are duly plangent – certainly
Andante
tranquillo but not a dirge and here played with an apposite
sense of motion and lightness and warm cantilena. Though
the finale is a bit loquacious – and repetitious – it’s accomplished
nonetheless and receives an appropriately breezy reading.
Without the same sense of a historical lineage
in this work, Capuçon sounds more comfortable here,
more equable in a work that is in any case a much more equable
one. With the Dvořák, the greatest concerto in the cellist’s
repertoire, things are more equivocal.
Jonathan Woolf
Gautier Capuçon
(cello) 
