Quiz #4: And the winner is….

Giorgia from Opera Bouffe. She correctly identified the movements as belonging to Cello Suite No. 3 Op. 87 by Benjamin Britten

Honourable mention must go to Damiel who wrote in with the Cello Suites in general. He beat Giorgia to the finish line but wasn’t able to give the specific information required. OM judges are persnickity like that.

The cellist was Denise Djokic.

Here’s a bit of a look into the relationship between Britten and Rostropovich (the cellist pictured yesterday) from Slava himself:

“Meeting Britten was a very significant moment in my life, but when I met him for the very first time I was completely idiotic. Because of the Iron Curtain that cut my country off from the outside world I only knew one work by Britten, the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. It is, of course, a set of variations on a theme of Purcell, but even though I could tell that this was a fantastic new musical language that was far more recent than Purcell, I thought that maybe Britten was somebody from the past who was no longer alive.

Well, in 1960 at the Edinburgh Festival I had just given the first Western performance of Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, and afterwards Shostakovich came backstage with one other gentleman. Shostakovich said, “Slava, may I introduce you to Benjamin Britten.” I laughed like mad — what a marvelous joke. But then when I saw the expression on Shostakovich’s face I quickly thought that maybe this was the real Benjamin Britten.

Immediately Britten said to me that the performance I had just given had affected him so much that he hoped I would agree to see him. I told him what a wonderful honor this would be, and we made an appointment for the next day in my hotel in Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales. The next morning, before he came, Shostakovich told me, “I have got bruises on one of my ribs because while you were playing the concerto last night Britten kept digging his elbow into my side whenever he was excited by your playing.”

Then, when Britten arrived he came to my room and asked if I would accept his invitation to write a sonata for me. He said that if I did accept he would perform the piano part with me, but he had only one great wish to ask me in return: that I play it with him in his Festival in Aldeburgh. I told him I was so honored, and about a year later we had our first time together in Aldeburgh. We played an entire recital: the Debussy Sonata, the new Britten Sonata and the Schubert “Arpeggione” Sonata. From that moment I was a slave of Benjamin Britten! (Source: Andante)

In addition to the three cello suites (Op 72, 80 & 87), the partnership resulted in a Cello Sonata Op 65 and a Cello Symphony Op 68.