CANCELLED: NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester / Alisa Weilerstein / Alan Gilbert

Alan Gilbert and top cellist Alisa Weilerstein have had a long artistic friendship. The chief conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra accompanied the rapid rise of the American musician, born in 1982, from the outset; they have given numerous concerts together, and most recently they recorded Beethoven’s Triple Concerto. Now Gilbert invites her to Hamburg to appear in a special concert.

On the programme are two works that could hardly be more different: Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto dates from the period of political thawing after Stalin’s death in 1959. The work’s subject is relevant today: repression by the state versus political freedom. The listener gets the impression that the composer wanted to highlight his personal triumph over the repressive Soviet bureaucrats with the recurring notes D-S-C-H, referring to the initials of his name.

By way of contrast, Anton Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony is dedicated to pure beauty. This is the only one of his nine symphonies that the composer gave a nickname which immediately conjures up positive associations: both in correspondence and in the score itself he calls it his »Romantic« symphony. There is certainly no lack of poetic interpretations of the uplifting work, and with his own reading Alan Gilbert, who recently recorded Bruckner’s Seventh with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, continues the orchestra’s impressive Bruckner tradition in its 75th anniversary year.