Article published in Manchester Evening News 13 March 2015

CELLIST Alisa Weilerstein has become a welcome visitor to the Hallé over the past five years, giving outstanding performances of the Dvořák concerto and Shostakovich’s first. 

Now, in this season highlighting all Shostakovich’s concertos for violin, for piano and for cello, she’s back to play the second cello concerto (with Sir Mark Elder). It’s a very different work from the first – and yet, she says, “I actually think the second concerto is far more profound. 

“Musically it’s different, of course, and it ends very enigmatically and quietly. The first is virtuosic and clearer – the second, written a long time afterwards, is more introspective and darker. 

“These are things I really love exploring. Shostakovich has a very identifiable, individual language, and the first concerto for violin and first for cello have a similar structure and character. 

“But in his music there’s always an underlying sense of struggle, even if on the surface it pretends that everything is lovely. That’s something that appealed to me, even as a child.”

She began playing very early in life and always wanted to be a soloist with orchestras around the world. In the years since 2010, when we first heard her play with the Hallé, she has begun recording the greatest 20^th century cello concertos under a contract with Decca Classics. 

That has included a highly praised recording of Elgar’s concerto, with Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin. It grew from live performances with him and the Berlin Philharmonic in Oxford and Berlin – and she says, remembering that he and Jacqueline Du Pré had once played and recorded it together, to begin with she felt ‘that’s the only work I can’t play for him …’ 

But she found him a conductor who treated her in ‘the most fantastic way’ – and the CD has been a career milestone for her.  

The other recent major milestone in her life has been getting married, 18 months ago, to young Venezuelan conductor Rafael Payare, the newly appointed boss of the Ulster Orchestra. They had ceremonies in both New York and Venezuela. 

Despite the busy schedules that each of them pursues, Alisa says: “We do see a lot of each other. When one of us is working, the other goes to where they are. Last month, for instance, he followed me to where I was playing – at other times I follow him. We chase each other around the world!”