BBC Young Musician Of The Year
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Yan Pascal Tortelier

Apart from breaking a string early in the first movement and having to start again, Johnston – at the age of 18 the youngest of the five finalists – was on intimate terms with Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto from the opening bars.  What made his selection as BBC Young Musician 2000 inevitable was his treatment of the cadenza, which is almost a movement in itself and a daunting challenge for the most mature of soloists. It was a matter not of virtuosity but of the quality of the thinking behind it.  Indeed, the whole interpretation was so imaginative, so sympathetic to the dilemma at the heart of the score, that, uncommonly secure though the playing was, the technical aspect of the performance was of less than secondary importance.

Gerald Larner