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What do the Kodly sonata and Shostakovich's first cello concerto mean to a cellist? Unquestionably they are among the great predators in the zoological garden of cello repertoire. Both pieces are wild and dangerous, but at the same time they derive part of their intensity from a paradox. Their temperament may be savage, but somehow or other they have been forced into their final shapes. The cage in which Shostakovich imprisons his beast consists, in addition to a rigid form, of dynamic discipline and remarkable indications of tempo. The discipline which Kodly imposed on himself comes from the fact that he wrote his many-headed monster of an irritable sonata for a single cello instead of a 300-headed orchestra. This "limitation" results in an overwhelming, gigantic battle expansion of the cello's territory. Never before has the cello been a vehicle for such visions, such lust as in this rhapsody of heroism, vitality, exaltation, and exoticism....