Kian Soltani, Barcelona Symphony Orchestra & Jakub Przybycień

Unavoidable linked to the charismatic Jacqueline du Pré, who has left her version of the work to posterity, Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor opens with the famous recitative for the solo cello, at the forefront of the dramatic action. It unapologetically highlights the strength shown by vulnerability itself, in a work supported through the leading role -in this case, the internationally famous Austrian virtuoso Kian Soltani– who, fuelled through dialogues with the orchestra, traces a kind of itinerary through one’s emotional life.

The alternating fervour and subtleness is once again supported by a very different language to that of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No 10. A work that appeared the same year in which Stalin died, and which was to mark a change in the regard in which the Russian composer was held (becoming a suspect to the regime after having been placed in a high position as a people’s artist). Discreetly distant from his previous works, the symphony -in the words of unforgettable violinist David Oistrakh- stands out through a force that “lies in the great dramatic effect, the intensity of conflicts, and the beautiful property of its language”.