Concert review: Sol Gabetta (cello) Philharmonia Orchestra/Elim Chan

Sol Gabetta has had the First Cello Concerto of Shostakovich in her repertoire for some years, and her reading of it has evolved over that time into a much more capricious piece. Her interpretation felt shaped by her historically informed investigations into repertoire before Haydn.

Accordingly the first movement was projected with low, gruff humour but also a contained bow that received sympathetic support from the Philharmonia. Gabetta kept the long Moderato on the move, underlining the main theme’s passacaglia-like qualities of simplicity and severity. She untangled the tortuous cadenza in self-effacing fashion, finding a Spanish quality to its strummed soliloquies.

She also brought a novel angle to the finale – without sending it up – as a parade or suite of Russian dances. But better was to come: a transcription of Lensky’s Aria from Eugene Onegin, done as an encore, in which Gabetta lived and almost sang every word with her bow. In some ways a model of restraint, restricted to the G and D strings and only jumping the octave for the last phrase, she captured every twist of the poet’s regret as he muses on spent youth and a life turned sour, with a sudden memory of unfulfilled love its only, hopeless consolation. Her performance sent me scurrying back to her 2008 album of transcriptions, affecting in its way, but no – you had to be there.

Peter Quantrill