A new disc, released on May 9th by the British record company Decca. It encompases concertante works and chamber works by Shostakovich and Britten, performed by the British cellist Sheku Kanneh Mason.

The whole world came to know the Black British cellist Sheku Kanneh Mason thanks to the invitation to play at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's royal wedding in 2018 - a global media event that took place exactly seven years ago, on May 19th, 2018, and which put the spotlight on this extremely talented cellist, who had already made a name for himself at professional events: in 2016, Mason won the BBC Young Musician Award at just 17 years old.

Today, Sheku Kanneh Mason (26 years old), has released nine albums with the renowned British company record Decca, and has had performances on major stages around the world. We had the opportunity to admire him in Bucharest, on stage at the George Enescu International Festival, during the last edition - and I was personally impressed by the modesty and professionalism of this cellist, who is truly a star.

Dmitri Shostakovich's concertos for cello and orchestra are an essential part of the concert repertoire dedicated to the cello - Sheku Kanneh Mason recorded the first of these on an album released in January 2018, and the second one is available today on the disc released on May 9th, 2025.

Both concertos were composed for one of the greatest cellists of the 20th century, Mstislav Rostropovich, who also performed them for the first time - the second concerto premiered on September 25th, 1966, on Dmitri Shostakovich's 60th birthday.

It is a concert that emphasizes the lyrical sound of the cello in a dense score with modern language - and Sheku Kanneh Mason navigates with confidence and humility, I would say, through this important music, which he recorded alongside with London Symphony, the orchestra conducted by John Wilson.

On the same disc, we also find another important work in 20^th century cello literature, Sonata Op. 40 by Dmitri Shostakovichs. This work was written more than 30 years before Concerto No. 2 for cello and orchestra, in 1934, during the Stalinist period. It also bears witness to a turbulent emotional period in the composer's life - his temporary separation from his wife, which ended happily with the reunion of the family and the birth of their first child.

During the same period, Shostakovich also worked on the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk work, which would bring about Stalin's ostracism and the first purge of his life - he would go through another one 12 years later, during the Zhdanov doctrine. As an American critic noted, the cello sonata is everything the work has never been: a work that does not challenge the canons, does not shock thorugh its modernity, and attracts with the lyricism of its melodic lines.

And Sheku Kanneh Mason, alongside his sister, pianist Isata Kanneh Mason, delivers a performance that is well suited to this work, though perhaps not as intense as those for whom Soviet realities were indeed personal experiences or experiences of the society that shaped them.