Shostakovich: Cello Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 (CD)

This year, to mark the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death, Andris Nelsons and the BSO conclude their award-winning decade-long Shostakovich Project by presenting brand new recordings of the Shostakovich Cello Concertos with Yo-Yo Ma. Benefiting from the superb audio quality achieved in the exceptional acoustic of Boston’s Symphony Hall, Yo-Yo Ma gives inspired performances of these two concertos. The inventive First was written for a friend, Mstislav Rostropovich, a famously demanding piece that was an early landmark in Ma’s own career. The far more introspective Second was the composer’s 60th-birthday present to himself. Introducing the latter work to the Symphony Hall audience, Ma said, “This piece is as relevant today as it was then. I think Shostakovich’s artistic truth was to represent the voice of the voiceless.”