Schumann: Cello Concerto & Symphony No. 2

Chronique

It wasn't so long before the late 2016 release of this album by cellist Jan Vogler that a historically oriented performance of music by Robert Schumann would have been considered something of a specialist oddity. No more: here are the Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129, and the Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61, in handsomely designed surroundings on perhaps the most major of all major labels, Sony Classical. Vogler contributes enthusiastic booklet notes, and you'll find that the gut strings applied to Vogler's 1707 Stradivarius cello do seem better suited than big-voiced modern cellos to this rather thorny work, in which Schumann refused to make any concessions to a dedicatee who wanted greater virtuosity. The cello seems to wind itself closely into the motivic flow, which is the point of the music. But the real find here is the performance of the Dresden Festival Orchestra under Ivor Bolton in the Symphony No. 2. This is also a historically oriented performance, with gut strings in the string section and period winds carving out the contrapuntal lines. What's most exciting, though, is the energy of the performance as a whole. Sample the stirring conclusions of either of the outer movements, and the mood storms so evocative of the troubles Schumann was self-avowedly going through. The performance of the symphony is worth the price here, and the whole thing feels like something of a breakthrough.

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