Czech Philharmonic • Vienna

Sheku Kanneh-Mason

cello

Music was constantly playing at his family’s home in Nottingham. That was the childhood of one of today’s most sought-after young cellists worldwide and a member of the Order of the British Empire, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, whose parents selflessly supported not only his musical career, but also those of another six talented siblings. Today, however, Sheku is the best known of them, earning worldwide fame in 2016 thanks to the competition BBC Young Musician, which he won at just 17 years of age. Next came a performance at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, thanks to which he became famous in society beyond musical circles. 

And that is his musical creed: to perform music that is accessible to everyone. For this reason, he can now be heard at famed concert venues from Wigmore Hall in London to New York’s Carnegie Hall as well as, for example, at school halls playing for children. During the lockdown in the spring of 2020, he and his siblings gave live concert broadcasts from their home in Nottingham that were watched by hundreds of thousands of listeners from all around the world. This tied in with the public performances they gave in 2015, having been successful participants on the television show Britain’s Got Talent. That is where they were called “probably the world’s most talented musical family”. Their mother Kadiatu has written the book House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons about their family life and the journey of all seven siblings to music.

Like his brothers and sisters, Sheku studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London (Hannah Roberts) and immediately upon graduating in 2022, he began working as the Academy’s first Menuhin Professor of Performance Mentoring. At the same time, his stellar career is filled with performances with such prestigious orchestras as the BBC Symphony Orchestras, the London Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, the New York Philharmonic, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and he gives world tours. For example, he opened the 2023/24 season by appearing at the concluding concert of the BBC Proms, and he was also heard in solo recitals in Canada and the USA, in a duo with the guitarist Plínio Fernandes, and with his sister, the pianist Isata. The duo of siblings is nothing new for audiences: they are heard not only in concert, but also on their joint album Song, his latest CD, following Inspiration (2018) and Elgar (2020), on which Sheku Kanneh-Mason presents a very personal selection of repertoire in a variety of genres (in both the works’ original forms and in arrangements). He attempts to take full advantage of the singing tone of his Matteo Goffriller cello from 1700.

Today, we hear him in Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, which he has already played many times. He first performed it at the competition BBC Young Musicians, where the youthful cellist came away from the final round as the overall winner. Of his many performances of the work since then, worth mentioning was an appearance in October 2023, when he had a string break twice during the concert. The first time, he handled the situation by going backstage to replace the string, then the second time he borrowed a cello from a member of the cello section of the Orchestre de Paris, with which he as playing under Nathalie Stutzmann’s baton. Today is his first appearance with the Czech Philharmonic; his planned performance of Elgar’s concerto in January 2022 was cancelled because of the pandemic.