Emmanuelle Bertrand

Alle Achtung! Die französische Cellistin Emmanuelle Bertrand legt eine Interpretation von Dmitrij Schostakowitschs erstem Cellokonzert vor, die es an Ausdrucksintensität und permanenter Hochspannung mit der Mstislaw Rostropowitschs, dem Widmungsträger des Werks, unbedingt aufnehmen kann. 

This is one hell of a performance of Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto. Emmanuelle Bertrand and conductor Pascal Rophé team up to produce one of the most intense and neurotic versions yet of this intense and neurotic piece. Read the full article

[a] clear recording with a forceful narrative, building up great intensity into the fleet-footed finale, where she [Bertrand] is incisively partnered by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales [...] Masterfully partnered by Pascal Amoyel, she adeptly combines the forces of irony and fantasy in the second Allegro of the Sonata. But it is the hauntingly eloquent suffering of the Largo where both players are most evocative.

Bertrand is nothing if not a gutsy player. The close-up recording captures her every breath and every rasp of bow on string. Pascal Rophe makes sure that the BBC NOW responds in kind [...] If she is as good live as she sounds here, and if she is as full of insight in the rest of her repertoire, I would certainly travel a distance to hear her [...] The Sonata, too, with Pascal Amoyel as much accomplice as accompanist, is individual without ever sounding forced. Bertrand gives us one of the dreamier accounts of the first movement and one of the most reined-in of the scherzo.

[Bertrand] wears the piece lightly, dancing rather than carving through it, with a silvery line that can be ghostly or piercing but never gruff [...] her bright, neat staccato is effective even if climaxes lack heft [...] The BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Pascal Rophe, however, really does dance on hot coals and give the requisite blast [...] [the Moderato in A minor] has a haunting poetry and one can hardly imagine it better played ***

In the Concerto, almost all of the playing is of intense musicality and virtuosity, which this highly original work demands...I feel that Bertrand does overdo at times the 'expressive' nature of her interpretation, but this observation is brought about solely because the rest of her performance is so impressive.

Dans cette œuvre de jeunesse, Emmanuelle Bertrand et son habituel complice Pascal Amoyel ont choisi les options les plus intimistes, les phrasés les plus souples, les échanges les plus délicats, à l’opposé d’une certaine tradition qui tire la partition, peut-être à tort, vers des états plus amers.