Blgar Archive

ELGAR: Cello Concerto in e minor; WALTON: Cello Concerto; G. HOLST: Invocation; I. HOLST: The Fall of the Leaf – Steven Isserlis, cello/ Philharmonia Orch./ Paavo Jarvi – Hyperion

by Audiophile Audition | Jun 6, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews

Steven Isserlis asserts his supremacy in British cello artistry with two major concertos and two unfamiliar works dear to his heart. ELGAR: Cello Concerto in e minor, Op. 85; WALTON: Cello Concerto; G. HOLST: Invocation, Op. 19, No. 2; I. HOLST: The Fall of the Leaf for Solo Cello – Steven Isserlis, cello/ Philharmonia Orch./ Paavo Jarvi – Hyperion CDA68077, 73:01 (3/4/16) [Distr. by Harmonia mundi/PIAS] ****: By general consensus, Steven Isserlis (b. 1958) currently reigns as Britain’s finest cellist, and his latest recording of the two major cello concertos – by Elgar (1919) and Walton (1956), respectively – bear witness to a talent that has earned meaningful comparison with the likes of the late Jacqueline du Pre. Recorded between November 2014 and April 2015, the Hyperion production also provides two relatively unknown pieces, by father Gustav Holst and daughter Imogen, the booklet’s testifying to the latter in Isserlis’ life with a photo of his reviewing the score of the solo The Fall of the Leaf with the composer in 1977. A colossal energy suffuses the first movement of the Elgar Concerto, marked with a devout melancholy which often rises up in rebellion to the elegiac sensibility of loss. Beyond […]