At the heart of this CD is the cellist Raphael Wallfisch. He not only performs these pieces with the utmost musicianship but they were also all written for him. Since the BBC NOW play with their customary skill under William Boughton, about as well established an expert on his native British music as one could wish to have, this CD is home and dry. The Hoddinott Hall is one of the best acoustics in the country and Lyrita's engineers have, as usual, produced a splendid sound. I did wonder about the slight left-placement of the cello but that is where soloists usually sit so it may simply reflect reality.

Joubert's work is, as the title states, in two movements. Each lasts a little over 11 minutes. Considering it is scored for only double woodwind, horns and strings, it displays a wide range of instrumental colours and is not only impressively coherent but also makes a very pleasurable sound. There is plenty of energy in the work. This is not a pastoral idyll one can allow to just wash over you. Joubert keeps one firmly engaged throughout and reminded me that I have neglected my sole Joubert CD prior to this, the First Symphony, also on Lyrita.

The late Robert Simpson was a very important symphonist and composer of string quartets. His musical structures require close attention from his listeners. This concerto, one of a mere handful, is typical of his later style. It was in fact his last orchestral piece. It consists of a theme and eleven variations played without a break and lasting very nearly half an hour. It is by turns lyrical and dramatic, ending quietly. Though the orchestra is large the textures are always clear and I found myself gripped by his typically involved musical argument right up to the 'calm resignation' of the coda, described thus in the excellent notes by Paul Conway.

Finally Christopher Wright has come to my attention only recently, having heard an extract from his lovely Violin Concerto of 2010 (Dutton CDLX 7286), so I was not surprised to discover that his Cello Concerto is also a fascinatingly individual creation full of lovely sounds but also of much energy and momentum.

We do not hear many different cello concertos in the concert hall. Those by Elgar, Dvorak, Schumann and Shostakovich are deservedly the most frequently performed. The three recorded on this CD are of a quality and approachability to match such as Saint-Saëns, Hindemith, Martinu and Walton. They should most certainly not be allowed to lapse into obscurity.

- Dave Billinge, MusicWeb International

Mátyás Seiber studied composition at the Budapest Academy of Music under Kodály, from 1919-1924. At the time of his tragically early death, Seiber was one of the most respected teachers of composition in Britain. Antal Dorati entered the Hungarian Royal Academy of Music in 1920, at age 14. His illustrious career as a conductor has completely overshadowed his compositions. Bartok's Viola Concerto, commissioned by the Scottish violist William Primrose, was left in sketch form at the time of the composer's death. The eventual completion by Bartok's friend Tibor Serly has been the subject of debate ever since it's first appearance in 1949.

Raphael Wallfisch recorded the First Cello Concerto for Chandos, one of the very first CD releases on that label, coupled with the Barber Concerto. It was a good performance, but it pales in comparison with his remake here. This set offers what is, hands down, the finest pairing of the two Shostakovich Cello Concertos since Heinrich Schiff and the composer's son--with all due respect to Rostropovich--set the modern standard in this music (on Philips). The First Concerto comes across with positively frightening intensity, a product not just of Wallfisch's strong projection of the solo, but also owing much to the take-no-prisoners accompaniments of Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony. Just listen to the interplay between Wallfisch and the sneering, threatening woodwind section--it's what this music is all about.

At the opening of the second movement, Wallfisch adopts a dusky, gamba-like sonority: think of Dowland's Lachrymae. The instrument truly seems to weep through the music, while the finale acquires an extra degree of bitter edge by being played very rhythmically, but not too quickly. Wallfisch really comes into his own in the cadenza, holding the entire movement together through perfect timing and a wide range of tone colors and dynamics. It's a great performance, as is that of the comparatively neglected Second Concerto.

Again we find soloist, conductor, and orchestra keenly attuned to the music's overt emotionalism. In the first movement, Wallfisch and Brabbins subtly characterize both the first and second subjects, preventing any hint of monotonous sameness in the exposition section. The development rises to a splendidly impassioned climax, followed by a ghostly coda that never drags.

In the central scherzo, once again a comparatively deliberate tempo combines with punchy rhythms to the music's expressive advantage, while the lengthy half-sweet, half-grotesque variation-finale never has been so colorfully projected. This is such a beautiful work; only the fact that it ends quietly and mysteriously conspires to keep it in the shadow of the First Concerto. In some ways it's even more melodically appealing, and this is a performance that captures its wide-ranging expression as well or better than any other.

The inclusion of the Cello Sonata and the cello arrangement of the late Viola Sonata, along with two miscellaneous short pieces, completes a package offering all of Shostakovich's music featuring solo cello. In the chamber works, John York is the sensitive piano accompanist, and both he and Wallfisch offer excellent interpretations of both large works. The finale of the Viola/Cello Sonata is particularly well held-together, with the youthful freshness of the earlier "true" Cello Sonata enthusiastically captured.

The engineering in the concertos is absolutely outstanding: balances between cello and orchestra are perfectly judged, but the microphones still capture a tremendous amount of ear-catching detail. Obviously a great deal of credit for this has to go to Brabbins and the orchestra, who offer none of that generic, lazy professionalism so common today. These performances display an idiomatic style of a kind that you seldom find even inside Russia today (witness Pletnev's often bland Russian National Orchestra, or Gergiev's mediocre Kirov band). The result is an absolutely irresistible set that no fan of Shostakovich will want to miss.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Pianist Sviatoslav Richter and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich were among Prokofiev's friends during the last years of his life. They inspired the composer to continue his work and he, in turn, dedicated his 1947 Ninth Piano Sonata to Richter. For Rostropovich he wrote an amazing group of late works, among which was the Sonata for Cello and Piano. Both the Ninth Piano Sonata and the C Major Cello Sonata are considered masterpieces, finding Prokofiev at the height of his powers. The two Sonatinas, Op. 54 are delightful miniature Sonatas, each lasting less than 10 minutes. The two illustrious artists featured on this disc, Donohoe and Wallfisch, partner each other affectionately and in perfect harmony in this recording.

One of the worlds most respected and recorded cellists, Raphael Wallfisch, in his first recording for Cello Classics, turns his attention to works inspired and written by the great Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaÿe During the years he spent in Paris, from 1883 to 1886, Ysaÿe formed close ties with many great composers of the day, receiving the dedication of Franck's Sonata in A, and commissioning what is probably the best known work by Guillaume Lekeu, himself a pupil of Franck. In addition to the many works for his own instrument, cellists are fortunate to have two works written by Ysaÿe, his Solo Sonata Op. 28 and the Rêve d'Enfant

This album is a reissue of the Chandos label's 1988 recording of Dvorák’s Cello Concerto in B minor and the Konzertstück for Cello and Orchestra by Dohnányi, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Charles Mackerras, with Raphael Wallfisch the featured soloist.

The Cello Concerto in B minor by Dvorák has become one of his most popular works, and perhaps the most popular concerto ever written for the instrument. He was asked to write this piece by a friend of Wagner, the cellist Hanuš Wihan. Initially reluctant, Dvorák stated that the cello was indeed a fine orchestral instrument but totally insufficient for a solo concerto. Fortunately, he changed his mind upon hearing Victor Herbert’s Second Cello Concerto performed in concert, in 1894. The resulting Cello Concerto is richly inventive, full of deep feeling, and perfectly fitted to the cello. Dvorák combined his experience as an orchestral player with an understanding of the cello’s distinct textural qualities to produce a grand and emotionally intense work, one of his finest achievements.

Ernst von Dohnányi was highly acclaimed as a pianist-composer, and widely regarded during his lifetime as a successor to Liszt. As a composer, however, he had more in common with Brahms than with Liszt, despite his Hungarian heritage, and his creative output was not limited to the piano. His Konzertstück in D major is in fact a full-scale cello concerto, in three interconnected parts. A lyrical rhapsody, it begins quietly, the cello emerging out of the orchestra and seeming to sing, until parting with a sense of regret at the end.

Recorded in: St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead, London 4-5 July 1988 Producer(s) Brian Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Ralph Couzens Janet Middlebrook (Assistant)

Thanks to the tireless advocacy of the pianist Simon Callaghan, the music of the Derbyshire-born Roger Sacheverell Coke has started to emerge from the obscurity in which it has languished since the composer’s death in 1972. Despite showing considerable early promise, Coke remained an outsider in British musical life. Following studies at Eton (until 1931), he took private lessons with Mabel Lander (piano) and Alan Bush (composition) rather than attending university or music college. Coke credited Bush for helping him to find his musical voice, and cited Arnold Bax as a major influence, but his musical sympathies also extended to Bruckner, Mahler and Rachmaninoff at a time when all three were deeply unfashionable among musical cognoscenti. The three cello sonatas featuring on this disc frame the years 1936 to 1941, a very productive period in Coke’s life. It is a measure of Coke’s confidence in the cello sonatas that he programmed them all in a single concert at the Wigmore in London on 6 October 1951, with the cellist Sela Trau, and invited critics from several of the major broadsheets.

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REVIEW:

Composer and pianist Roger Sacheverell Coke (1912-1972) was born into an affluent family and produced a large body of works before a number of mental and physical health problems took their toll. Coke bankrolled concerts to promote his music, yet critical acclaim largely eluded him. Then again, his unabashedly Romantic idiom, heavily influenced by Rachmaninov, had fallen out of fashion. However, pianist Simon Callaghan’s passionate advocacy on Coke’s behalf may be spearheading a revival. If you like early 20th-century British Romantics like Arnold Bax, Cyril Scott, and York Bowen, you’ll definitely respond to Coke’s aesthetic.

His three sonatas for cello and piano date from between 1936 and 1941, and are characterized by lush yet never cloying harmonic invention, skillfully deployed balances between the instruments, slow movements that build toward intense climaxes, and occasional moments of wry humor–the First sonata’s jauntily acerbic Scherzo, for example (sound clip). Perhaps the Second sonata is the strongest and most substantial of the three, with its bold, declamatory motives and inventive textural interplay.

Callaghan and cellist Raphael Wallfisch throw themselves into each work wholeheartedly, embracing the idiom’s full-blooded heights and stark moments of respite with both abandon and sensitivity. Excellent, informative notes and fine engineering enhance this worthy addition to the chamber music catalog.

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

It may or may not be purely coincidental that this third volume in Naxos’s issue of the complete Boccherini Cello Concertos has been released in the year that marks the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death. Whatever the case, this new recording, featuring an entirely different soloist and orchestra from the previous volumes, should not disappoint collectors of the entire cycle. Raphael Wallfisch proves to be a most stylish and sympathetic performer. He has the necessary technical armoury to cope with the fearsomely difficult writing in each concerto, but also delivers a wonderfully expressive melodic line in the slow movements. Throughout Wallfisch plays his own cadenzas which are free from Romantic bluster and empty virtuosity. The partnership with the Northern Chamber Orchestra works very well, though the reverberant and muddy recording does not always serve the music to its best advantage. While the rather heavy bass line seems apposite for movements such as the Maestoso of the C major Concerto, it appears to undermine the lightness and wit of the rondo finale of the well-known B flat Concerto, and makes some of the slow movements sound more lugubrious than one might have expected. Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Erik Levi, BBC Music Magazine

Cellists are fortunate indeed to have their two Brahms sonatas, both masterpieces in their genre. So one can, and certainly will, ask why we need or indeed dare to 'borrow' the G major violin sonata and the two clarinet sonatas and thereby make our two into five. Questions that arise: Are we just attempting to reproduce the original work with the necessary pitch and register changes? Can this be an opportunity to give another significance, even a second parallel existence, to a beloved work of art? The answer to the first question must be 'no', because such a treatment would simply be arrogant and pointless. To the second, I hope, listeners can agree that the two clarinet sonatas and the G major violin sonata lose nothing in these 'translations' and even gain a great deal of new and perhaps unexpected depth and character.