Press
What followed might have sent the crowd home feeling well compensated for the ticket price, even without the big symphony to come: Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with soloist Sol Gabetta in a performance that melded disarming potency with breathtaking finesse. With a fierce concentration to match Mäkelä’s, the Argentine cellist pulled the listener into a work of excruciating intimacy. Even the withering collaboration between cellist and orchestra was eclipsed by Gabetta’s galvanic turn through the concerto’s expansive cadenza, a veritable Shakespearean soliloquy, at once spacious and precise, not so much questioning as fraught, less Hamlet than Lear.
- North American Classical Voice, 05.04.2024
