Although the First Cello Concerto is well represented both on LP and Compact Disc the Second is not available at all. It was recorded for DG by Rostropovich, its dedicatee, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Ozawa (2530 653, 11/76) but did not last long in the catalogue. The same fate afflicted the Second Violin Concerto. So, the present issue is an important as well as a logical coupling. Many of the rival couplings are also only recordings: Raphael Wallfisch (Chandos) offers Samuel Barber's perennially fresh Concerto, Yo-Yo Ma (CBS) has Kabalevsky's No. 1 and Tortelier (HMV) has the only current version of the First Violin Concerto from Oistrakh and Maxim Shostakovich, and even at mid-price, MiloG Sadlo on Supraphon gives us Honegger's beguiling Concerto of 1929 (110 0604, 3/81). Rostropovich gave the premiere of the First in the Soviet Union in October 1959, and in the West a month later with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, and his pioneering CBS record, now at mid-price ,remains very much in a class of its own. In the First Concerto, Heinrich Schiffs excellent version with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Shostakovich fils can hold its own against most opposition. The first movement is taut and well held together and the second is beautifully shaped, the passion and poignancy of the climax being particularly well conveyed. In the cadenza Yo-Yo Ma is the more compelling: he makes one listen to every nuance and wait upon every rest without being any less pensive or inward than Schiff. I like the recording very much: it is totally natural yet very clear, and by its side both the CBS and the Chandos rivals listed above seem just a shade overbright.
The Second Concerto comes between the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Symphonies, neither of which endeared him to the Soviet Establishment. The concerto did not meet with the enthusiastic acclaim that had greeted No. I and has not established itself in the repertory to anywhere near the same extent as its predecessor, perhaps because it offers fewer overt opportunities for display. It is a work of eloquence and beauty, inward in feeling and spare in its textures. The opening Largo could hardly be in stronger contrast to the corresponding movement of No. 1. It is intimate and withdrawn in feeling, and on first encounter seems closer to the ruminative Nocturne of the Violin Concerto No. 1. It seems rhapsodic and fugitive, and it takes time before one realizes how purposeful is the soloist's course through the shadowy landscape. Yet the sonorities have the asperity so characteristic of Shostakovich. It is a haunting piece, lyrical in feeling, and gently discursive, sadly whimsical at times and tinged with a smiling melancholy that hides deeper troubles. Hearing it again in this fine new recording, it strikes as puzzling that its neglect both in the concert hall and on the gramophone has been so total. Recommended with enthusiasm.'