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Artist: Alisa Weilerstein
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Alisa Weilerstein:

Dvorak

American cellist Alisa Weilerstein's new recording for Decca/Universal Music Classics will feature the music of Antonín Dvorák, and will be released in North America on January 28, 2014. The album explores works created during the time Dvorák spent in the United States, and will feature his Cello Concerto in B minor and Silent Woods, both recorded with Jirí Belohlávek and the Czech Philharmonic. Also included on the album are arrangements of "Song to the Moon" from Rusalka, and the song Goin' Home, written by one of Dvorák's pupils and based on the melody from the Largo movement of his "New World" Symphony. "Song to the Moon" and Goin' Home were recorded in New York City at the American Academy of Arts and Letters with Russian pianist Anna Polonsky.

Alisa Weilerstein:

Solo

With the Decca Classics release of her album Solo on cellist Alisa Weilerstein underscores her role as an instrumentalist with something deeply personal to say. The centerpiece of the album is the MacArthur Fellow's interpretation of Zoltán Kodály's classic Sonata for Solo Cello of 1915. Weilerstein's account of the Kodály also features in the recent film If I Stay (and on its accompanying soundtrack album); based on the best-selling novel by Gayle Forman, the movie marks Weilerstein's feature-film debut, in a cameo appearance as herself. Along with the Kodály and Spanish composer-cellist Gaspar Cassadó's Suite for Solo Cello of 1926, the CD version of Solo includes Bright Sheng's Seven Tunes Heard in China and Osvaldo Golijov's Ormaramor, highlighting Weilerstein's passion for contemporary music. A deluxe digital version of the album also includes György Ligeti's Sonata for Solo Cello and Britten's Tema Sacher, as well as Prokofiev's March arranged for solo cello by Gregor Piatigorsky.

Alisa Weilerstein:

Shostakovich Cello Concertos 1 & 2

Musicians often set great store by their artistic genealogy – having a teacher who was taught by a musician who studied with a great performer of the nineteenth century, for example. But the genealogical chain rarely comes with as few links as it does in the case of Alisa Weilerstein and her connection to the composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose two great cello concertos she records for Decca Classics.

In fact the chain has just one link. Weilerstein was mentored by the legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, for whom both concertos were written, and who was a great friend of the composer. For authenticity of insight and authority of information, Weilerstein's credentials could hardly be more auspicious.

The cellist was 22 when she played Concerto No. 1 for Rostropovich. As she recalls:

"He was a titanic presence, sitting very close, his feet almost touching mine. I played the entire concerto for him without stopping. He then gave me a piece of advice which I'll never forget. He said that the emotions in Shostakovich's music should never be ‘direct' or ‘heart on sleeve.' The performer should convey intense emotion that has to be somehow concealed at the same time."

For this recording Weilerstein performs with the Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, although the circumstances of each concerto were different. The First was set down in studio conditions, and the Second at a live concert later in the same week. Heras-Casado, who is also Principal Conductor of the Orchestra of St Luke's, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Teatro Real, Madrid, has nothing but praise and admiration for the cellist's artistry: