Alban Gerhardt & Markus Becker - Rostropovich Encores (2017)

An album of encores once played by someone else, even someone as famous as Mstislav Rostropovich, might seem an overspecialized product, but German cellist Alban Gerhardt had some success with a similar album devoted to Pablo Casals, and is now back for more. Gerhardt does a reasonable impression of Rostropovich's songful style, overlaid with a bit of mysterious and gloomy Russian philosophy. But the really innovative feature of the album is the program, which draws out the breadth of the great Russian's musical interests, even in the seemingly restricted feel of the encore. Rostropovich understood how to communicate with an audience in a way of which cellists today can only dream, and if he did not have the music he needed at hand, he had it arranged from other media, or arranged it himself. Or he wrote it himself: the album features two Rostropovich compositions, neither terribly common. There are big tunes like the Rachmaninov Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14; brilliant virtuoso pieces like the Elfentanz, Op. 39, of David Popper; folkish fun like Rostropovich's own Moderato; familiar tunes like the "March" from Prokofiev's The Love of Three Oranges; and even influences from the world of popular music like Ravel's Pièce en forme de habanera and Rostropovich's own arrangement of Debussy's jazzy Minstrels, from Book I of the Preludes. Rostropovich's affinity for Minstrels showed just how wide his interests were, and the album as a whole does a good job of surveying that. Recommended for Rostropovich fans. -- James Manheim