Sol Gabetta’s first recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto, with the Danish National Symphony, was much admired when it appeared six years ago. This one, taken from a concert in the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus in 2014, is a far glossier affair orchestrally. Simon Rattle’s tendency to overmould the phrasing is sometimes too obvious, but Gabetta’s playing is intense and searching, less introspective than some performances in the Adagio, perhaps, but epic in scale in the outer movements, and always keenly responsive. Those who possess her earlier disc might not think they need to invest in this one, but would then miss Gabetta’s vivid, pulsating account of the Martinů concerto, which went through a quarter of a century of revisions before the definitive 1955 version she plays here, with Krysztof Urbański conducting. She finds real depth and intensity in it, both in the slow movement and in the introspective episode that interrupts the finale’s headlong rush.
Young cellist Han-Na Chang, Korean-born and trained in the U.S. by Mstislav Rostropovich, is a newcomer to Baroque music, having released a mixture of cello classics and late-Romantic and contemporary concertos up to this time. Here she delivers a set of seven Vivaldi cello concertos that Rostropovich himself might have helped her shape; it's something of a throwback to the way Vivaldi was played 30 or 40 years ago.
Cellist Jacqueline du Pré needs little introduction to most listeners. Whether as a result of being perhaps the most prominent female cellist in the last century, her meteoric rise to fame at a young age, the equally rapid decline of her career at the hands of multiple sclerosis, or simply the incredible passion with which she performed, du Pré possessed a singular capacity to make an impression on her audiences. She was single-handedly responsible for reviving the long-dormant Elgar concerto that was to become one of her trademark pieces.
A remarkably intimate recording of Schumann's Cello Concerto in A minor, this performance by Anne Gastinel and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège, directed by Louis Langrée, may be a little too forward for the average listener's comfort. Direct Stream Digital engineering places Gastinel front and center – almost in one's living room – and the orchestra is not far behind. Such "living presence" may be an audiophile's delight, but others may find the proximity disconcerting, especially because Gastinel's bowing seems overly resinous up close. However, this is the only complaint worth making about this disc, for Gastinel is wonderfully expressive and the orchestra is extraordinarily balanced and clear in its timbres, no mean achievement in Schumann's problematic, thick orchestration. The remaining performances are less forwardly recorded and sound pleasant and natural, with a fresh spontaneity that feels more like a recital than a studio session.