Description

Lost Russian cello concerto on x-ray picture disc with a bizarre backstory: In the 1950s, Roentgenizdat – or X-ray publishing – became a trend in Soviet counterculture. Bone music and rock on ribs are two other terms that describe these bootleg recordings of music from the West, ingeniously cut onto X-ray film discarded by hospitals. This Record Store Day release carries an X-ray image of a spine and pelvis – and a 1967 recording that has its own underground history: when the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich was exiled from the USSR in the 1970s, a resourceful Soviet archivist saved the original tape from destruction by hiding it in a mislabelled box. It is Rostropovich s world premiere performance of the Cello Concerto No. 2 by his teacher and mentor Dmitri Shostakovich, recorded live in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire with the USSR State Symphony Orchestra under Evgeny Svetlanov. This is it s first release on vinyl, limited to 1500 copies pressed on x-ray picture disc.