Czech Philharmonic ⬩ Sheku Kanneh-Mason

“Music expands your imagination, and it lets you express what cannot be said in words. We usually call those emotions.”
– Sheku Kanneh-Mason

Winner of the 2016 BBC Young Musician Award, 25-year-old British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason shot to international fame when he played at the royal wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry two years later. The live broadcast was watched by over 30 million people worldwide: “First I was asked if I would play during the ceremony, and of course I immediately said yes! Then the telephone rang – ‘Hi, this is Meghan Markle. Want to play at my wedding?’ I was completely bowled over.”

For his debut album Inspiration which went onto become a top-seller, amongst other works, Kanneh-Mason recorded Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto which he has chosen to make his Czech Philharmonic debut with under the baton of Semyon Bychkov. One of the most difficult works in the cello repertoire, Shostakovich wrote his First Cello Concerto after being inspired by the playing of the great Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Here it is has been programmed by the Czech Philharmonic’s Chief Conductor between two works of the Classical era which also contain powerful musical tension.

The title of the Haydn’s Symphony No. 44 in E minor “Trauer-Symphonie” (“Mouning Symphony”) supposedly comes from Haydn himself: he is said to have wanted its slow movement played at his funeral. Whether or not this is just a legend, the work in any case belongs to the series of Haydn’s symphonies from the 1770s that reflect the emotionally tense atmosphere of the period, influenced by the German literary movement called Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress).

When Ludwig van Beethoven was composing his Second Symphony, he was suffering from physical ailments, the most frightening of which was gradual loss of hearing. Without knowing the real cause of the condition, physicians prescribed various therapies, but these did not help leading Beethoven to even consider a voluntary departure from life. One gets an insight into his state of mind when listening to this music which is almost defiant at times. As a critic at the time described the symphony as “…a noisy, wounded giant, a wildly writhing dragon that refuses to die, still bleeding in the finale as it thrashes about furiously with its erect tail.”