Cello Concertos

Cello: Steven Isserlis Orchestra / Conductor: London Symphony Orchestra / Richard Hickox (Elgar / Bloch) London Phiharmonic / Andrew Litton (Kabalevsky) Chamber Orchestra of Europe / John Eliot Gardiner (Tchaikosky) Minnesota Orchestra / Edo de Waart (Strauss) About the composers: Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky (Russian: Дми́трий Бори́сович Кабале́вский; 30 December 1904 – 14 February 1987) was a Russian composer. He helped to set up the Union of Soviet Composers in Moscow and remained one of its leading figures. He was a prolific composer of piano music and chamber music; many of his piano works have been performed by Vladimir Horowitz. He is probably best known in the West for the "Comedians' Galop" from The Comedians Suite, Op. 26 and his third piano concerto. Ernest Bloch (July 24, 1880 – July 15, 1959) was a 20th-century Swiss-born American composer. A highly individual composer, Ernest Bloch did not pioneer any new style in music but spoke with a distinctive voice into which he could assimilate folk influences, 12-tone technique, and even coloristic quarter tones. In a stylistically atomized century his interests were universal, and his music was both beloved by the public and inspirational for a younger and more academically oriented generation.