Advantages: Highly burnished, engaging, musically intelligent and emotionally mature playing; beautiful tone is never saccharine. Disadvantages: Nil.
It would be one of the most daunting works to take on for any musician, given the history of its recording, yet British cellist Natalie Clein decided to do it. It took her some ten years to get to the point where she felt ready to tackle it again for posterity, and this CD gives her good reason to be proud.
ELGAR'S CELLOCONCERTO AND DU PRÉ
So what's so intimidating about Edward Elgar's CelloConcerto? Besides its call in the performer for technical virtuosity and a mature musical understanding of the piece, the concerto has also been inextricably linked with Jacqueline du Pré (1945 - 1987), cellist extraordinaire, who was tragically struck down at the prime of life by multiple sclerosis. Her landmark 1965 recording, made when she was just twenty (with John Barbirolli conducting the London Symphony Orchestra), is still hallowed by ...
Advantages: The Best Recording Ever Disadvantages: None
recording of both pieces on this CD, (the Elgar CelloConcerto and his “Sea Pictures”), were made in 1965, but you wouldn’t know if I hadn’t told you and didn’t know du Pre died at the tender age of 42 in 1987. There is no discernible scratchiness and they are as fresh as if just whisked out of the oven at the EMI new discs bakery. I bought this CD because the CelloConcerto is one of my favourite pieces, and I was pleasantly surprised by the “Sea Pictures” which I wouldn’t have chosen as I’m not a big fan of operatic voices.
The CelloConcerto was Elgar’s swan song. It was his final big musical effort, written during the First World War. Elgar was suffering both mentally and physically at this time, and felt depressed and oppressed by the war, (who didn’t?), and the concerto ...
Advantages: It is simply one of the finest pieces of music ever written Disadvantages: How dare you ask of any disadvantges!?!
. It was only followed by the Severn Suite, the fifth and final Pomp and Circumstance March, and an Organ Sonata in B flat major. Apart from those there is nothing outside of sketches for some larger scale works, most notably a Piano Concerto, an opera "The Spanish Lady" and a Third Symphony (which has been masterfully elaborated by Anthony Payne to a full-length work). Apart from those works, Elgar was silent, and spent most of his time between 1919 and his death in 1934 in the recording studios, where he also gave the world the best performance of his Violin Concerto with the 15-year-old Yehudi Menuhin in 1932. As to the CelloConcerto, Elgar never lived to see its success, but perhaps he never needed to. Perhaps he already knew its value himself to care much. If anything, the Elgar Concerto is among my top ten all time favourite ...
![Chopin; Loewe: Piano Concertos No 2 [SACD]](http://imagesb.ciao.com/iuk/images/products/small/229/Chopin_Loewe_Piano_Concertos_No_2_SACD__6197229.jpg)
