Cellist Daniel Müller-Schott attacked the opening motif of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 1 – a modified form of the composer’s musical signature ‘DSCH’ – with a full, elastic sound, giving the jagged four-note figure a lively bounce. Keeping the Sydney Symphony Orchestra on a tight rein, conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy – in the second of his Shostakovich tribute concerts with the SSO – kept the accompaniment textural and understated, allowing the cello to bask in the spotlight.

Cellist Daniel Müller-Schott

The German cellist boasts fine credentials in this music – he studied with Mstislav Rostropovich, for whom Shostakovich wrote both of his cello concertos (the first in 1959 and the second in 1966), and Müller-Schott’s 2008 recording of the pair with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks was well received. While some players give the Allegretto a harder-edged quality, Müller-Schott brought out its lyricism in this performance – without losing the fierce energy that makes it such exciting music. He captured a mood of sonorous longing in the slow movement, his lonely cello melody underpinned by twisting violas and pizzicati from the lower strings. Ashkenazy allowed the accompaniment to unspool gradually without ever...