The Independent, August 2010


“A phenomenal young cellist, Alisa Weilerstein, pretty much stole the evening with her extraordinary account of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.1…Weilerstein was the complete musical actress whose orations from hushed and furtive and fearful to ferociously assertive were gripping in the extreme.  We must cast our minds back to Rostropovich to remember an account of the slow movement as potent and technically accomplished as this. The sad song of the opening emerged as from a frail old voice and Weilerstein’s extraordinary subito piano effects and the way she could drain colour and sound to near-inaudibility (as in the passage in ghostly harmonics) and yet demand attention from the farthest reaches of the hall were astonishing. The huge cadenza was truly her “mad scene” and might just be the most disturbing thing we’ve heard all season.”