Collective Listening Project

Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason Selects

Playlist No. 34

About the Playlist

November 12, 2020
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With this week’s Collective Listening Project, we begin our month-long focus on the extraordinary Kanneh-Mason family—seven siblings, ages 10–23, all of whom play instruments at award-winning levels. 21-year-old cellist Sheku already has quite the reputation transcending the screen with his playing, having enchanted over 35 million people across the world playing at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. He will join his sister pianist Isata on Sunday, November 29 at 3PM (EST) for our next Watch Party concert and Q&A, live from the Kanneh-Mason family home in Nottingham, England, to which you can RSVP HERE.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy getting to know Sheku by listening to the playlist that he has curated!

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Largo from Sonata for Organ in C Major, BWV 529
Samuel Feinberg, piano

This piece and recording has the whole world and more inside it! Every time I listen to it, time stops completely. It has so much fragile beauty. That’s what’s so moving about it. I think Bach’s music and this piece particularly manages to be something heavenly and also incredibly human at the same time. The way Feinberg plays this can make me cry very easily!

EDVARD GRIEG  Violin Sonata No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 45
Fritz Kreisler, violin and Sergei Rachmaninoff, piano

This piece is magic. It’s incredibly beautiful and tender music. I love Rachmaninoff’s piano playing. He has so many colours, especially in the quiet dynamics, and is a master of timing and voicing. Kreisler’s playing is also so amazing, I love the unlimited different ways he connects two notes. It’s very vocal playing.

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Andante from Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 19
Mstislav Rostropovich, cello and Vladimir Horowitz, piano

Two of my favourite musicians ever playing one of my favourite pieces of all time! This sonata is incredible, and I think is one of the great pieces of chamber music. Horowitz and Rostropovich both have so much depth and range in the playing which is perfect for this piece. Every time I hear this recording, I hear something different from Horowitz, his voices and timing are exquisite. From the first note Rostropovich plays, you know you are listening to a legend.

BOB MARLEY “Chances Are”
This is one of my favourite songs of all time. It also reminds me now always of the months spent at home in lockdown, as it was one of the songs we were listening to a lot as a family. Bob Marley is such an expressive artist, who manages to convey sadness, hope, power, and a feeling of unity in one melody. He’s always inspired me.

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