60s Music - Blackbirds

Nicolas Altstaedt’s starting point for this recording was the magnificent Second Cello Concerto by the Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz (1909–1969): “When I first looked at the work, I immediately thought: Why is this never played? It’s amazing how she can conjure up a whole world with just a few notes.” Pianist and conductor Maxim Emelyanychev leads the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and also accompanies his friend on the piano in a work composed two years earlier: Benjamin Britten’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, as well as in a 1960 work by Morton Feldman, Durations II... This is followed by a sonata by Sándor Veress, one of Altstaedt’s favorite composers, this time for solo cello: composed in 1967, this pioneering work in the solo cello repertoire completes this overview of music from the 1960s. It ends with a live recording of John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s famous “Blackbird,” recorded with Thomas Dunford on lute and vocals in a church in Portugal, while the bells toll midnight.